2 min read - Hypertension
A 45 years old female patient presents to you saying, 'Dr. I think I have blood pressure'. You measures her blood pressure and it's 160/100mmHg. What are you going to do? Your first task is to establish the diagnosis of hypertension. How can you diagnose a patient to have hypertension? Blood pressure should be properly measured! it's not easy. Things that we often miss are Quite/calm room Bladder not full Correct patient position Rest the arm on the table Correct cuff size NO talking during procedure Avoid caffeine, exercise, smoking for minimum 30 min Measure BP in both arms, select the arm with the higher value for future measurements Take two values 1-2min apart and calculate the average. Confirm the high blood pressure on a second occasion/ confirm that it's not transient Sometimes a second measurement is not necessary if there's evidence to say patient had chronic hypertension Retinal changes ECG - LV hypertrophy Hypertens