Blood pressure targets in primary care

Abstract

A balancing act between the certainty of evidence and the messier reality of everyday practice

Hypertensive Urgency—Is This a Useful Diagnosis?

“…Most older patients require multiple medications with all the challenges these pose in terms of drug interactions, hypotensive falls, and the burden of care. 5 Perhaps the wise thing to do in the context of a very low incidence of major cardiac events recorded in this study, even in patients with markedly raised readings, is to move toward a concept of "good enough" BP, in line with the values and aspirations of individual patients rather than the counsel of coercive perfection that permeates so many contemporary guidelines. In their introduction, Patel et al 1 cite a reference to sug-tion this extraordinary statistic provides a telling insight into the current state of medicine and the extent to which numbers and symptoms have become disconnected within biomedical thinking.…”