One of my areas of medical expertise is hypertension having been certified as a specialist in clinical hypertension in 2002 by the American Society of Hypertension (ASH). As I do each year, I just attended the annual meeting of the European Society on Hypertension and Cardiovascular Protection (ESH) which occurred in Barcelona Spain, June 8-11.
It was a very exciting event as ESH 2018 introduced its newest guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension. Furthermore, Dr. Paul Whelton, the lead author of the American guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension released in September 2017, was a guest speaker and he participated in a discussion comparing the American and the European Guidelines.
We tend to lose sight of the fact that poorly controlled blood pressure (hypertension) is the root cause of heart failure, atrial fibrillation, sudden death, kidney failure, heart attacks, stroke and atherosclerotic vascular disease. In fact, deaths from hypertension and related complications exceed all of the causes of death combined. Think about that, hypertension and hypertensive co-morbidities kill more people than all deaths caused by cancer, smoking, alcohol, influenza, AIDS, West Nile Virus, pneumonia, influenza, drug overdoses, car accidents and everything else imaginable!
We know from the landmark studies that started in the 1960s and 1970s and which have continued for the past 60 years that treating the “Silent Killer” dramatically reduces hypertension-related deaths.
