High blood pressure, or hypertension, is a serious health issue that affects many adults in the United States. If left untreated, it can lead to heart attacks, strokes, and kidney problems.
Older adults are especially at risk, yet a recent study has revealed that fewer than 30% of seniors who need stronger treatment for high blood pressure are actually receiving it. This gap in care is worrying because proper blood pressure control is proven to prevent life-threatening health problems.
Blood pressure is measured with two numbers. The top number is called systolic pressure, which shows the pressure in your arteries when your heart beats. The bottom number is called diastolic pressure, which measures the pressure when your heart is resting between beats.
According to the latest guidelines from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, high blood pressure is defined as 130/80 mmHg or higher. This new standard means that many more people are now classified as having high blood pressure, increasing the number of people who should be receiving treatment.
The study was conducted by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. They analyzed health data from adults aged 60 and older who had been diagnosed with high blood pressure and visited their primary care doctors over a ten-year period from 2008 to 2018.
The researchers wanted to find out how often patients received what is called “appropriate antihypertensive intensification.” This means that if a person’s blood pressure is still high during a visit, their doctor should add another blood pressure medicine or increase the dose of their current medication.
The results were surprising. During the study, there were about 7,404 primary care visits where doctors should have intensified the patients’ treatment based on their blood pressure readings. This number represents about 293 million visits across the country.
Despite this need, the percentage of patients who actually received the stronger treatment never went above 27.5%. For patients who were already on blood pressure medicine, the number was even lower—just 15.3% received the necessary adjustment.
Even more concerning is that the rate of proper treatment actually went down over the ten years of the study, despite updated guidelines recommending stricter blood pressure control. The researchers believe this drop happened for a few reasons.
First, many doctors are worried that adding more blood pressure medicine could cause older adults to feel dizzy or even fall. This is a real concern because falls can be very dangerous for seniors. Second, patients themselves sometimes don’t want to take more medicine because they are worried about side effects or are already taking many pills.
There is also the challenge of time. Most primary care visits are only about 15 minutes long. In that short time, doctors have to talk to their patients about not just blood pressure, but also cholesterol, diet, weight, and other health concerns.
They also have to fill out a lot of paperwork and update medical records. With so much to do, adjusting blood pressure medicine might sometimes get overlooked.
The researchers say that more studies are needed to figure out how to encourage doctors to treat high blood pressure more aggressively in older adults. One idea is to improve medical record systems so that doctors get automatic alerts if a patient’s blood pressure is too high during a visit. This would remind doctors to consider adjusting the medication before the patient leaves.
Dr. Nicholas Chiu, the main author of the study, believes that solving this problem could make a big difference in preventing heart disease and stroke in older adults. If more patients received the right treatments, it could reduce hospital visits, improve quality of life, and even save lives.
This study, published in the AHA journal Hypertension, highlights the need for better blood pressure management for seniors. It is a reminder that while we have the tools and the medicines to control high blood pressure, these treatments are only effective if they are actually used.
Improving how doctors and patients manage high blood pressure could help many older adults live longer, healthier lives.
If you care about high blood pressure, please read studies that early time-restricted eating could help improve blood pressure, and natural coconut sugar could help reduce blood pressure and artery stiffness.
For more health information, please see recent studies about added sugar in your diet linked to higher blood pressure, and results showing vitamin D could improve blood pressure in people with diabetes.
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