Tuesday 27 May 2008

Diabetes And Blood Pressure

Diabetics get a raw deal on blood pressure treatments.

New research shows that diabetics with high blood pressure have only a fifty percent chance that their doctors will change their medications when they need to or will give them other blood pressure treatment

Diabetic patients have a higher risk for heart attack, stroke and can develop kidney problems. Treating high blood pressure in people with diabetes is very important, because lowering the blood pressure can reduce the risk of these complications.

The recent research project tried to understand when doctors would respond to an elevated blood pressure, by changing the patient's medication or by following the patient more closely.

The study showed that family doctors only change treatment for blood pressure about 50 percent of the time and other previous studies showed that the situation was sometimes even worse than that.

You can find the full study reported in the May 20 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine

More than a thousand people with diabetes were assessed during a one-year period. At the start of the study, all patients had high blood pressure, which is defined as 140/90 mm Hg or higher. The blood pressure goal for people with diabetes is 130/80 mm Hg.

The results showed that about fifty percent of patients had their blood pressure treatment changed during a clinic visit. The change consisted of either a new medication, a change in dose of a current medication, or a plan to follow up within a month.

The lead research doctor found that many doctors in the study only took one blood pressure reading during a patient's visit. In some cases, when more than one reading was taken, the results weren't compared.

Also, many doctors didn't take into consideration home blood pressure measurements reported by the patients.

Many experts in blood pressure and diabetes think doctors need to be more aggressive in treating blood pressure.

One leading professor thinks doctors should intensify treatment every time blood pressure is high. Blood pressure should be the first thing doctors look at during a patient's visit, and it should be treated before moving on to other problems.

Patients can play a role, too - patients should ask their doctor: What is my blood pressure goal? Am I at goal? If I am not, what should we do about it?

More attention is needed in this very important medical field.

Gordon Cameron is a physician in Edinburgh Scotland. He has a special interest in Treatment for high blood pressure

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