Repetition of Blood Pressure Foundations (Nursing)

00:01 Hi, welcome to our video on medications for hypertension.

00:05 This video, we're going to focus on a particular group of medications known as calcium channel blockers.

00:11 Now, you'll see this chart of blood pressure categories in most of our videos.

00:15 So keep in mind that normal is < 120 systolically, and < 80 diastolically.

00:23 Now, you watch the numbers rise, but anything higher than 120/80 means you're starting to get into some elevation.

00:30 Goes all the way up through what we see as a hypertensive crisis.

00:35 That's a systolic number that's > 180 and a diastolic number that's > 120.

00:41 Now I want to underscore hypertensive crisis means you don't treat this at home.

00:46 A patient with a blood pressure this high is in significant danger and needs to seek advanced medical help.

00:54 Now, just a quick review, again, of the medications we use to treat hypertension.

00:59 We have ACE inhibitors, and one of our tips is the generic names for ACE inhibitors ends in "pril." We have angiotensin II receptor blockers and they end in "tan." We talk about those in a separate video.

01:11 We've got beta blockers and they end in "olol," and we've got calcium channel blockers and they usually end in "pine." So those are the ones that we're going to zero in on for this video.

01:23 But we've got a couple others that are kind of in our bag of tricks in how we teach hypertension.

01:28 Sympatholytic drugs, other than beta blockers, those are drugs that kind of go against the effect of the sympathetic nervous system.

01:36 Because, remember, the sympathetic nervous system causes everything to -- heart beats faster, stronger, because we're in danger.

01:44 Sympatholytic drugs are the exact opposite of that.

01:48 We can use direct vasodilators because when you vasodilate the vessels, the blood pressure will lower, and we can use selective aldosterone- receptor antagonist, because those will help us have less volume on board and should therefore, give us a lower blood pressure.