The clinical question that McAlister et al sought answers to was: "Although a purported advantage of newer antihypertensive drug classes is a reduced need for laboratory testing, what is known about the frequency of laboratory monitoring of hypertensive patients in clinical practice and does this differ across drug classes?" 

Open Medicine has now published two comments/response to McAlister et al that are worth reading for family physicians, cardiologists, internal medicine specialists and anyone interested in these findings: