Apr 01 2008
Blood Pressure Treatments Effective for Elder Patients
Apr 1: Doctors find it difficult to treat elderly patients who are suffering from high blood pressure. But a new study has revealed that treating patients above 80 years of age for high blood pressure will effectively reduce the risk of heart failure and even death due to cardiovascular disease.
While commenting on this the professor of medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, Dr. Harlan M. Krumholz said: “On the backdrop of increasing number of elder population due to the lack of proper information about the ways to treat them. Doctors feel difficult while treating older patients and they also feel hesitant to give aggressive treatment. Many doctors consider them as too old to treat. If the patient is more than 80 years old the doctors feels better to give mild treatment.”
Dr. Harlan was not involved in the study. The findings of the study were published in the New England Journal of Medicine on the eve of the annual meeting at the American College of Cardiology at Chicago. As part of the study the research team comprising international experts choose 3845 people over 80 years of age with blood pressure. They are treated using diuretic to minimise the blood pressure.
After two years long therapy the researchers found that the systolic blood pressure among the patients taking diuretic was 15 mmHg lesser than patients getting placebo. The diastolic pressure was 6.1 mmHg that is also lower than placebo patients. The systolic and the diastolic pressure are the top and bottom in reading respectively.
The researchers also noticed that the risk of stroke among the elder patients who are treated for blood pressure has seen 30 per cent decrease and the number of death rate from stroke also decreased by 39 per cent when compared with patients getting placebo.
The death from cardiovascular diseases has also decreased, the heart failure has also seen 64 percent decrease.
The study also found that there is a 21 percent decrease in the death rate from all causes. The findings of the new study allow doctors to give aggressive treatment for the elderly patients who are suffering from high blood pressure.
