The first thing people need to know is that high blood pressure itself is usually present for many years before its effects are actually felt. The goal then is to diagnose and treat high blood pressure before it actually does any physical damage to the organs of the body. To achieve this goal it is important to have early screening programs and make the public aware of how dangerous high blood pressure can be if it is not treated quickly. By treating high blood pressure quickly enough you help avoid stroke, heart attack and kidney failure.



To find out if a patient has high blood pressure, a blood pressure test needs to be done. This test is very simple to do and is not invasive in any way. A normal blood pressure is 140 over 85. For African Americans it is recommended that this number be a little lower. Anything over 140 over 85 is considered high blood pressure. Obviously the higher the numbers the more serious the condition. Also, patients with diabetes and chronic kidney disease want to bring their blood pressure down even lower. In patients with high blood pressure life style changes are usually required, such as change in diet, but many times these changes aren't enough because of certain genetic reasons the patient may have high blood pressure. In those cases treatment is usually required.

Life style changes are usually where treatment starts. The doctor may give the patient a diet to follow or send the patient to a qualified nutritionist to design a diet if the doctor feels that the condition warrants it.

In cases where the blood pressure is very high, more aggressive treatment may be started right away even before life style changes are put in place. These circumstances include borderline diastolic pressures associated with end-organ damage, systolic hypertension, or factors that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, such as if a person is over 65 years of age, of African American decent, a smoker or has hyperlipemia or diabetes.

There are several classes of medications that can be given under these conditions called anti-hypertensive drugs. There are also some drugs that can only be given in conjunction with these anti-hypertensive drugs called alpha blocker medications.

In cases where the patient has an underlying condition that is causing the high blood pressure, another drug will need to be given in addition to the anti-hypertensive drug in order to treat the underlying condition as well otherwise the one drug on its own won't be able to do the job properly. An example of this is giving beta blockers to stop migraine headaches which most likely are being caused by the high blood pressure condition.

In cases where the blood pressure level is very high sometimes emergency treatment is needed. In these cases drugs like itroprusside and labetalol are given which will hopefully bring the dangerously high blood pressure down quickly. This is usually only done in cases where there is immediate danger of a stroke or heart attack.

In our next article we'll discuss some alternative treatments for high blood pressure.