Preventing Medication Errors at Home by Simon Haroutounian

Author:Simon Haroutounian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

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HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE

The Silent Killer You Can Stop

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is one of the most prevalent chronic disorders and is a common reason for the use of prescription drugs. Approximately 30% of adults in the United States are affected by high blood pressure. In fact, high blood pressure has become so common that some people are not even making a “big deal” of it and do not consider it a serious disease. This is absurd, honestly, because hypertension is one of the main contributors to heart attacks, strokes, and kidney diseases. So let’s be very clear about this: high blood pressure is a disease, and quite a dangerous one.

Hypertension is usually diagnosed based on two or more high blood pressure measurements of above 140/90 mm Hg. Ideally, your blood pressure levels should be around 120/80 mm Hg. The first (higher) number is termed systolic blood pressure (this is the pressure in the blood vessels when the heart contracts), and the second, lower, number is termed diastolic blood pressure and reflects the pressure of the blood when the heart is resting between each two beats. High blood pressure can appear without any apparent cause or can have a known cause such as kidney disease or a long-term use of certain drugs such as corticosteroids, decongestants like pseudoephedrine, and illicit substances such as methamphetamine and cocaine. The risk for high blood pressure increases with age, weight gain, excessive alcohol consumption, lack of physical activity, and presence of diabetes and high blood cholesterol. It is also affected by race and is more prevalent and severe in African Americans.

High blood pressure is a tricky condition, and as I already mentioned, it is dangerous. Uncontrolled hypertension causes damage to the blood vessels in the heart and the brain, which can result in a heart attack or stroke as well as damage small blood vessels (capillaries) in the eyes and the kidneys. Unfortunately, it is difficult to diagnose hypertension early because people frequently do not have any symptoms until some damage has already occurred. You may suffer from tiredness or headaches as symptoms of high blood pressure, but the symptoms are very nonspecific and are common to many other conditions. In fact, hypertension is usually diagnosed accidentally, either during a routine checkup in the physician’s office or during an emergency department or hospital visit. After hypertension is diagnosed, however, it is very important to make your best effort to keep the blood pressure under control. Extensive research performed in the past several decades has clearly shown that good control of blood pressure reduces the risk of heart failure by half, the risk for stroke by one third, and the risk for heart attack by about one fourth.

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