Hypertension has become the most common type of disease that threatens the people of our country, and our country's hypertension treatment guidelines point out that there are at least 245 million hypertensive patients in China at this stage, and the largest group of these hypertensive patients is the elderly. So, how much is it appropriate to control blood pressure in the elderly? Today Dr. Zhang will talk about this topic in detail, hoping to help more elderly people with elevated blood pressure.
As we all know, young people's blood pressure is high, try to control blood pressure as low as possible, can significantly reduce the risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases in young people. However, for the blood pressure management of the elderly, many experienced doctors are not willing to excessively reduce the blood pressure of elderly hypertension patients, and are more willing to make the blood pressure of the elderly slightly higher, so that it seems to avoid the occurrence of adverse events such as hypotension, and it can be safer. There is no problem with this, because in the real world, many elderly people are prone to low blood pressure, and some people even have accidental injuries because of this. However, if the elderly can tolerate it, can the blood pressure of elderly hypertensive patients be better controlled? If this is done, is it not possible that the incidence of cardiovascular disease in the elderly can also be reduced? This is the question that many elderly people with high blood pressure especially want to know.
In 2021, a study from the famous Beijing Fuwai Hospital in mainland China answered this question well, and this clinical medical study called STEP was finally published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine and was voted one of the best medical papers of the year. This study found that for 60-80-year-old elderly hypertensive patients, if the blood pressure is better controlled, such as controlled to the range of 110-130mmhg, it has a lower incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases than those elderly hypertensive patients with blood pressure of 130-150mmhg. It is worth mentioning in particular that the main subjects of this study are the Han elderly in China, which can be used more as a guiding standard for the Han elderly to lower blood pressure.
In fact, this study is not the first medical trial to find that elderly patients with hypertension have better blood pressure control and a lower incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Previous years of SPRINT studies have long discovered this phenomenon, this study once again confirmed high blood pressure, as long as they can tolerate a lower blood pressure within a reasonable range, maybe we need to control their blood pressure better, so that they have a lower incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.
At the end of this article, Dr. Zhang still wants to remind the elderly hypertensive friends in front of the mobile phone that blood pressure is better controlled and the incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases is lower. However, it has to be said that this conclusion is premised, that is, the elderly can tolerate lower blood pressure levels, at least no adverse reactions such as hypotension. For many elderly people, if they cannot tolerate lower blood pressure, they can still moderately relax the blood pressure target value, after all, we cannot let the elderly have more harm in order to control blood pressure. Are you right?