The proper management of hypertension is arguably one of modern medicine’s most effective preventive interventions. It’s also one for which we have lots of clinical trial data, as well as a good number of well done meta-analyses. Yet as this week’s BMJ shows, controversy about how best to diagnose and treat hypertension in adults is still alive and well.

The 2011 guidance from the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has been met with a blast of criticism. This week we present two different critiques: the first suggesting that the guidelines are overcomplicated, the second that they are insufficiently evidence based. In a third article, …