Salt Restriction in Hypertensive Patients-Reply

—Dr Cohen criticizes our study for a methodological error that was not made. In the abstract, methods, and discussion sections, we repeatedly describe the treatment received by the patients assigned to Group C as "group management plus feedback." As he notes, the title does not mention feedback, but titles usually compress the meaning of studies. We said all we could in the 84 characters (including punctuation and spaces) allowed by the Archives' "Instructions to Authors." Space was not available to include information on feedback. The title Dr Cohen suggests exceeds 84 characters and does not include the important fact that the patients were being treated for hypertension.

The education group required the same amount of professional contact time as the group management plus feedback patients, while the advice group took less time. Group management plus feedback gave the best results. Without feedback, both the advice and education groups achieved smaller