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Our DVD has a special section for health professionals in which Professor Peter Sever and Professor Neil Poulter discuss current guidelines for assessment and treatment.

Diagnosis and Investigation

Assessing the risk of cardiovascular disease

We can calculate someone’s risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke over the next 10 years. Guidelines state that someone is at high risk if their risk is >/= 20%. Certain conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and pre-existing coronary heart disease automatically place patients in the high risk category.

Treating High Blood Pressure with lifestyle change

How big are the benefits?

Treating High Blood Pressure with medication

When and who to treat
Antihypertensive drugs: guidelines on which drugs to use
Statins and Aspirin

Treatment targets

Ambulatory and home BP monitoring

Special groups

Female patients: The main point here is that they should be treated in the same way as men! They tend to develop high blood pressure at a later age than men, but by age 70 have overtaken them

Older patients: Older patients benefit even more from treatment of high blood pressure than younger people do.

African descent: People of African descent living in the UK are more likely to have high blood pressure than other groups, are more likely to get strokes and kidney disease as a result, and may need different drugs.

South Asian Descent: People in this group are more prone to heart disease and diabetes, and tend to have higher cholesterol and other harmful fats in the blood.

Type 2 Diabetes: It is very important to control blood pressure in this group and we have a lower target (we aim to reduce the blood pressure to less than 130/80).