Robert Phillips, MD, PhD, executive vice president and CMO of Houston Methodist Hospital, and his colleagues are working to challenge the new hypertension guidelines in an effort to keep approximately 10 million patients from receiving unnecessarily aggressive blood pressure treatments, according to a paper published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
"While it's estimated that 107,500 deaths could be averted annually in the U.S. by implementing more aggressive treatments, it may be accompanied by other serious, adverse events," Dr. Phillips said. "This presents clinicians and patients with a dilemma, potentially trading one clinically significant condition for another."
The American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology and nine other professional health organizations issued the new rules, which were written by 21 scientists and health experts who reviewed over 900 published studies.
The guidelines now classify hypertension as a reading of 130 over 80, as opposed to 140 over 90. The new reading means 46 percent of U.S. adults are now considered hypertensive, up from 32 percent.
"Classifying patients by degree of future risk might be the best way to identify who could benefit most from intensive treatment," Dr. Phillips said. "We developed a model using the 10-year cardiovascular disease risk and found that aggressive treatment of patients with a risk greater than or equal to 18.2 percent would result in more benefit than harm, while those with a risk of less than that would fare better under a standard blood pressure management approach."
However, the numbers the researchers found are at odds with the new blood pressure guidelines, which suggest treating patients who have a risk greater than 10 percent risk.