New guidelines issued this week on the treatment of high blood pressure will greatly improve the diagnosing of hypertension and reduce the incidence of stroke, heart attack and congestive heart failure due to cardiovascular causes, a UConn Health doctor said this week.
The new American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology guidelines on hypertension reduce the threshold for the diagnosis and treatment of blood pressure in adults from 140/90 mmHg to 130/80 mmHg, said Dr. William White, past president of the American Society of Hypertension and chief of the Division of Hypertension and Clinical Pharmacology at the Pat and Jim Calhoun Cardiology Center at UConn Health. White also is professor of medicine at UConn School of Medicine and editor-in-chief of the journal Blood Pressure Monitoring.
With this new blood pressure level, it’s estimated the percentage of adult Americans diagnosed with hypertension will increase from 34 percent to 46 percent, with the largest increase in Hispanic men, White said.
Aside from reducing health problems, the new guidelines also will greatly expand the use of out-of-office blood pressure monitoring, including ambulatory blood pressure, to properly diagnose hypertension and masked hypertension in untreated and treated patients, he said.
