ER Visits for High Blood Pressure Increase Dramatically
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iStock/Thinkstock(KALAMAZOO, Mich.) — It’s possible that hearing about all the risks of having high blood pressure could actually be giving Americans high blood pressure.
Certainly it’s a problem with as many as 76 million adults believed to have hypertension, some going for years without it ever being diagnosed.
What’s more, the number of people visiting emergency rooms for high blood pressure with no known cause rose 25 percent between 2006 and 2011 while visits for hypertension with complications and secondary hypertension also increased by 19 percent during that time span.
The upside, according to Sourabh Aggarwal, M.D. at Western Michigan University School of Medicine, is that admissions for these conditions have dropped. Of those admitted, deaths fell by more than a third from 2006 through 2011, likely because doctors are better equipped at treating the disease.
Just the same, Aggarwal says that people need to have a better handle on treating hypertension before it sends them to the hospital. The American Heart Association recommends adults get themselves to an ER if their blood pressure is 180/110, otherwise known as hypertensive crisis.
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