Title:Hypertension in the Elderly
Volume: 12
Issue: 3
Author(s): Nicolas R. Robles and Juan F. Macias
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Elderly, hypertension, pathogenesis.
Abstract: Data collected over a 30-year period have demonstrated the increasing prevalence of hypertension with age.
Aging is an inevitable part of life and brings along two inconvenient events: physiologic decline and disease state. High
blood pressure (HBP) is an important risk factor for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, particularly in the elderly. It
is a significant and often asymptomatic chronic disease, which requires optimal control and persistent adherence to
prescribed medication to reduce the risks of cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and renal disease. Hypertension in the elderly
patients represents a management dilemma to geriatric and cardiovascular specialists and other practitioners. Furthermore,
with the wide adoption of multiple drug strategies targeting subgroups of hypertensive patients with specific risk
conditions to lower blood pressure (BP), difficult questions arise about how aggressive treatment of elderly patients
should be. The purpose of the following chapter article is to review the pathophysiology of aging as well as the
epidemiology and the clinical assessment of high blood pressure (HBP) in older people.
