Proposed changes to diagnosis criteria labels millions more as hypertensive
Published: 2018-10-09
Clinical Question
What is the effect of changing the definition of hypertension?
Bottom line
To paraphrase the Bard: Is a diagnosis by any other criteria still the same diagnosis? This study found that recent guidelines (2017) from the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA), which have not been endorsed by other groups, would immediately classify more than 70 million Americans and more than 266 million Chinese as having hypertension, many of them eligible for treatment. Translated, in the range of 45 to 75 years of age, 63% of the United States population and 55% of China's population would be classified as having a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (no analysis, yet, of other countries). Although a boon for the pharmaceutical and life insurance industries, these numbers could overwhelm national health systems and provide little benefit to their populations
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