MILD HYPERTENSION CAN BE TREATED WITHOUT DRUGS
For people with mild hyper-tension,
encouraging lifestyle changes should be the first line of recommendations for
physicians rather than putting them on drugs, suggest experts.
Lead researcher Stephen Martin and colleagues argue that the
current strategy is failing patients and
wasting healthcare resources.
"Over-emphasis on drug treatment risks adverse effects such
as increased risk of falls and misses opportunities to modify individual
lifestyle choices," they noted.
They called for a re-examination of the threshold and urge
clinicians to be cautious about treating low risk patients with blood pressure
lowering drugs.
Up to 40 percent of adults worldwide have hyper-tension, over half of which is
classified as mild.
Low risk indicates
that an individual does not have existing cardio-vascular diseases, diabetes or
kidney diseases.
Over the years,
hyper-tension has been treated with drugs at progressively lower blood
pressures.
"We urge
clinicians to share the uncertainty surrounding drug treatment of mild
hypertension with patients, measure blood pressure at home, improve accuracy of
clinic measurements and encourage lifestyle changes," Martin concluded.
They were scheduled
to discuss the findings at the 2014 Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference hosted
by the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine at the University of Oxford.
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