Hypertension: Summary

00:01 Well, in summary, this has been a rather long talk about hypertension because this is an extraordinarily important topic.

00:07 The definition is generally blood pressure of 140/90 or greater. In elderly patients, we allow a little more room: 150/90 is acceptable or if the patient is already using high blood pressure medications.

00:21 The mechanisms are neural and hormonal. And we worked our way through there.

00:25 That is a very complicated series of control of blood pressure between the brain and the arterial receptors that are measuring blood pressure and the kidney and the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system. And often the mechanisms are set a little too high in patients who have genetic forms of hypertension, which is a very large part of the population.

00:49 Complications can be very nasty: cardiac arrhythmias, kidney failure, stroke, dementia, heart attacks, blindness from retinopathy and diffuse blood-vessel damage.

01:01 And the therapy consists of lifestyle changes: weight loss, control of sodium, regular exercise as well as very effective medications that help to control and decrease vascular resistance and thereby decrease hypertension.