In a new study from California Northstate University College of Medicine, researchers found that more intensive hypertension treatment may be helpful for preventing or delaying strokes in older adults.
High blood pressure treatment in older adults can decrease mortality, cardiovascular events, including heart failure, cognitive impairment, and stroke risk, but may also lead to harm such as syncope and falls.
Guidelines recommend targeting preventive interventions with immediate harms and delayed benefits to patients whose life expectancy exceeds the intervention’s time to benefit (TTB).
In the current study, the team analyzed nine trials involving 38,779 adults with an average age ranging from 66 to 84 years and follow-up times ranging from 2.0 to 5.8 years.
Researchers found that it took 1.7 years to prevent 1 stroke for 200 older persons treated with more intensive hypertension treatment.
Specifically speaking, for older adults with baseline systolic blood pressures below 150 mmHg, the time to benefit from more intensive hypertension treatment was longer than 1.7 years.
For older adults with baseline systolic blood pressure above 190 mmHg, the time to benefit was shorter than 1.7 years.
Since most older adults have a life expectancy more than 1.7 years, the results suggest that almost all older adults with high blood pressure would benefit from intensive blood pressure treatment.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies about common chemical in food that may harm your blood pressure, and blood-pressure-lowering diet can also provide other health benefits.
For more information about stroke, please see recent studies about drug combo that can protect your heart health, prevent stroke, and case showing that orthopedic surgeon becomes patient after stroke at 48.
The study was conducted by Vanessa S. Ho et al. and published in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Copyright © 2022 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
