In terms of treating hypertension in seniors, the scheme just continuously stiffens. Just in December, there was a little controversy exploded when the JNC hypertension guidelines projected a hypertension treatment targeting those with blood pressure of around 150/90 of people who are 60 years old and above.  Just this month, there was a study conducted in JAMA Internal Medicine and according to the report, Medicare patients ages 70 and above were diagnosed with high blood pressure and the medicines given to them seriously lead to failure. This failure is about the patient ends up at the emergency room or becoming hospitalized for brain injury, fracture, knee, hip and shoulder dislocation and others.

How serious are serious falls?

There was a study of cohort that was divided into 3 groups and they are the no antihypertensive medication with 14.1%, the moderate intensity treatment at 54.6% and the high intensity treatment at 31.3%.  more than the 3 year period meant for follow ups, serious fall cases happened to around 7.5% of the patients under the no- hypertensive category and they are around 9.8% of the moderate intensity group, 8.2% of those are under the high intensity group.

What the author has to say?

The main thing in the mind of the people is that in terms of patients aged 70 years old and up, they are more prone to risks, especially those who are going through the treatment for hypertension than those who are usually recognized and currently going on treatments. While the study is ongoing, the author has just found out that Medicare beneficiaries often have more chronic cases than seniors who are actually going through the randomized trial for hypertension treatment. The main objective of a hypertension treatment is to lessen the risk of cardiovascular diseases, but it will be hard to prove the benefits even if the people get a result of lesser than 150/90.

Things to consider when treating senior citizens of hypertension

  1. Doctors should ask if the adults suffer from fall or about to fall at times before adjusting their medicines for hypertension.
  2. Gather more BP data before adjusting the medicines. The aim of the doctor here is to treat the BP of the patient, but it will be best if there are lots of basis on multiple readings beforehand.
  3. Check the BP of the patient after adjusting the medicines. Oftentimes, doctor adjusts the medicines of the patient, but the patient is not checking on his/her BP until the next visit comes, this shouldn’t be the case.
  4. Know if the patient is truly taking the medicines religiously before adjusting the amount. When doctors look for BP numbers, they should know if they patient are truly taking the medicines religiously or not.
  5. Lessen the BP medicines in high weak seniors. If there is a weak senior citizen taking BP medicines and then gets 120 or less than that, the doctor should ask about falling or any orthostatic from the patient for the reason that their results are beyond the targeted results.