The increase occurred during a period when some studies reported overall progress in blood pressure control and a decline in related cardiovascular events in the U.S. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
"Although more people have been able to manage their blood pressure over the last few years, we're not seeing this improvement translate into fewer hospitalizations for hypertensive crisis[*]," said Joseph E. Ebinger, MD, a clinical cardiologist and director of clinical analytics at the Smidt Heart Institute and first author of the study.
[...] To conduct their study, the investigators analyzed data from the National Inpatient Sample, a publicly available database. The data include a subset of all hospitalizations across the U.S., providing a picture of nationwide trends. They found that annual hospitalizations for hypertensive crises more than doubled over a 13-year period. Hospitalizations related to hypertensive crises represented 0.17% of all admissions for men in 2002 but 0.39% in 2014. Hospitalizations related to hypertensive crisis represented 0.16% of all admissions for women in 2002 but 0.34% in 2014.
The investigators estimated that from 2002 to 2014, there were 918,392 hospitalizations and 4,377 in-hospital deaths related to hypertensive crisis across the U.S.
The risk of dying from a hypertensive crisis, however, did decrease slightly overall during the studied time period. Women died at the same rate as men, even though they had fewer health issues than men who also were hospitalized for a hypertensive crisis.
[*] Hypertensive crisis on Wikipedia.
Journal Reference:
Joseph E. Ebinger, Yunxian Liu, PhD, MS, Matthew Driver, MPH et al. Sex‐Specific Temporal Trends in Hypertensive Crisis Hospitalizations in the United States, Journal of the American Heart Association (DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.121.021244)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @11:40AM (13 children)
Still, it had some noticeable effect, reducing deaths from stroke from 6.6% of total deaths in 2002 to 5.1% total in 2014.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 28 2022, @02:49PM (12 children)
Perhaps. But, some of us have lost friends who laughed off high blood pressure warnings.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @03:18PM (8 children)
At the same time, some of us have seen a lot of people live to advanced old age and die of unrelated causes despite decades of dire warnings.
The condition is more nuanced than a simple numbers game. Some people (grow to) easily tolerate very high blood pressure, and some get laid low by a relatively tiny increase. Identifying those latter and focusing on them would do more for saving lives, than all this carpetbombing the populace with "Moar Treatment!!!" to increase profits.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @04:02PM (5 children)
I pay something like a couple bucks for my generic blood pressure pills every 90 days.
True, a doctor will probably have you come to see him a couple of times a year in person to collect his visitation fee.
The pill companies sure aren't getting rich off me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @05:00PM (4 children)
If they can sell you one pill that you didn't need, they're getting rich off you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @05:13PM (3 children)
I agree with minimal meds. I need this one. I can feel the difference as compared to before quite easily.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @07:05PM (2 children)
Trading anecdote for anecdote, a couple years after one doctor put me on a blood pressure pill, another doctor told me to get rid of it; and I really could feel the difference as compared to my time on the pill THEN and since. Some treatments are really worse than the thing they are intended to treat, for some people at least.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @09:29PM (1 child)
This is not particular to blood pressure.
For ANY CONDITION, you've got to take control of your treatment. You can't just rely on the doctor to know what is best. Weigh his input, weigh your personal experience of your health, and decide for yourself. Your appropriate treatment may change over time; I don't think even a doctor would deny that. And consider the source: a GP will typically say, I can give you a pill for that, a surgeon will say, I can cut and stitch to fix that, etc. These are the tools at their disposal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31 2022, @08:39AM
A big part of the problem is that patients show up, take whatever, and then disappear until the next complaint (while never bringing up the old one again). How is your doctor supposed to keep up with the changes in your lifestyle, health, environment and all the other changes in your life when they never see you and you never ask. Doctors may be experts in different fields of medicine, but we aren't wizards or magicians. They may know medicine, but they can't know anything about you that they don't observe or that you don't tell them. Advocate for yourself if you aren't happy with what is going on. Just as people want a doctor that cares, you need to care too. Make them and yourself a part of your healthcare team. Weigh the pros and cons and make a decision you are all happy with. Set dates for reviewing your ongoing health needs and goals. They can help treat you and guide you, but ultimately you (or someone trusted by you) have to make the decision and you definitely have to live with it.
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Friday January 28 2022, @06:47PM
It boils down to whether or not the various organs which are likely to fail as a result of increased blood pressure are tolerating it. e.g. kidneys, heart, brain, arteries, eyes
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 29 2022, @05:53PM
Not blood pressure, but you could be talking about Grandma McGrew's cholesterol. Five doctors told her, one after the other, that if she didn't get her cholesterol down she was going to die, before dying himself.
She outlived all five (including three sons and two husbands), dying at age 99 after falling down in the nursing home and breaking her hip and insisting on a DNR order.
What people don't understand is that there are always some who fall in the "long tail", like my uncle Dan, who was diagnosed with ALS in his sixties and died from it in his eighties, decades later than most who get that disease. IIRC Lou Gherig was 40 when diagnosed, 60ish when he died.
When people ask how I can look so young at my age, I tell them I chose my grandparents wisely. It's statistically the long tail.
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 29 2022, @05:42PM (2 children)
My pressure was always low or normal, but my last doctor visit for a routine physical pegged my diastolic to 90. Rather than laughing it off I bought a blood pressure tester, and found that my pressure varies, it's high when I'm in severe pain from arthritis.
I recently found out that high blood pressure can be one of the effects of long covid, which explains mine. It also causes inflammation, which caused blindness in one of my daughter's eyes after she caught it (she had been fully vaccinated and boosted). They don't know if her vision will return. It also causes hair loss, which explains why I've been shedding so much in the last two years (had Covid in March 2020).
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 29 2022, @06:08PM
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30 2022, @02:37AM
Good thing mRNA vaccines which cause spike proteins to spread throughout your body (unlike an upper respiratory infection) in addition to the experimental nano lipids they use to get the science juice through the cell membrane have no long term adverse outcomes. SAFE and EFFECTIVE.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Friday January 28 2022, @12:23PM (6 children)
Isn't it far more true that blood pressure is really a symptom, not a cause?
High blood pressure is a result of something happening elsewhere, not a major problem in and of itself in the majority of cases.
Whether that's excessive stress, lack of sleep, weak heart overcompensating, or restricted blood vessels the blood pressure is merely a diagnostic.
It's like having dirty oil in your car, it's not a major problem itself so long as it's short-lived, but what's causing the oil to be black (e.g. lack of maintenance, incomplete burn, poor seals, etc.) that's the actual concern.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Common Joe on Friday January 28 2022, @04:27PM (4 children)
My anecdotal experience is that doctors prefer to treat symptoms instead of finding the root cause of the disease. More money is to be made that way, I suppose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @06:35PM
Bah. Everyone's trying to screw us. Screw them!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31 2022, @08:21AM (2 children)
My anecdotal experience is that patients prefer to treat symptoms instead of finding the root cause of the disease. Less effort to be expended or maybe it is just easier to ignore that way, I suppose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31 2022, @04:27PM (1 child)
My anecdotal experience is that doctor's don't have more than 5 minutes to talk with me during appointments. The symptom is all they get to hear about before they leave the room and go to another patient. The nurse comes in with a prescription later. If doctor's want to treat root causes, they need to spend the time to go beyond the symptoms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31 2022, @11:35PM
You just said they don't have the time. All the motivation in the world and anything else I could say doesn't matter when you don't have the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @05:09AM
You can disassemble a car to find and fix the problems, and then re-assemble it. It's a lot harder to re-assemble a human.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @12:55PM (1 child)
Live a sedentary lifestyle,
consume Palm Oil and Coke like no tomorrow,
take pills to thin blood,
What could possibly go wrong?
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Friday January 28 2022, @05:30PM
Yes. The only way to have good cardiovascular health is to exercise with your heart rate into the moderate range for your age, for at least 15-20 minutes. Or try those new high-intensity reps for 10 mins. Obviously not if you are old or fat though. That's just begging for a quick death.
No diet and no amount of pills will save you from a sedentary lifestyle and a lifetime of eating processed foods.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @02:09PM (10 children)
Everybody has. This predisposes you to high blood pressure.
Drinking is bad for blood pressure too. Americans are drinking more (increase due primarily to women).
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @03:07PM (4 children)
> (increase due primarily to women).
Ambiguous:
Women drink more
Men drink more, blame it on women
??
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @03:59PM (2 children)
The alcohol companies have grown their sales a great deal by growing the one market segment that wasn't fully exploited: women. It has not been so beneficial for the women, or, indirectly, the men.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @07:19PM (1 child)
It is questionable if popping antidepressants day after day after day is any healthier than good old booze.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @01:41AM
(Score: 1, Redundant) by HammeredGlass on Friday January 28 2022, @06:48PM
Reread the comment. You read "Americans" as "Men"
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @04:54PM (4 children)
The world has gotten angrier, and although most people don't admit it, they are angry at Judeo-Globalism playing twisted cargo-cult humiliation games with the world populace, then using censorship to prevent people from discussing it.
Hopefully, people will step up to expel Jews from their countries and send them back to Israel or Ukraine where they belong.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @05:07PM (2 children)
The real threat to America is fat, fat incels sitting in their basements, munching cheetos and sobbing very loudly about their own victimhood. They wail loudly trying to get anyone at all to listen.
Eventually they get weapons, pull their enormous bellies up and out onto the street, and go on shooting rampages. Then, if they survive, they blame it all on Antifa.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @12:41AM (1 child)
I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @01:11AM
Whip that dick out and start the circlejerk.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @12:33AM
That post is not really "Spam". The first paragraph is very insightful and just happens to be true, but... you can't say "Jew" on Soylent anymore, too many snowflakes lose sight of the message because they're so shocked!