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Old 24th Mar 2010, 16:43
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gingernut
 
Join Date: Apr 2000
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Your retired German friend may have a point, as I believe that there is some emerging evidence to suggest that variations in bp are indeed dangerous.

Your GP could be in a frenzy for several reasons- he's probably seen the effects of stroke first hand- it is disastrous.

His pay may also be linked to reducing your blood pressure to an "acceptable" limit !

When we start pushing the limits, we do seem to reach a wall of diminishing returns, but the evidence for treating blood pressure (you mention 150/90mmHg) is fairly well established.

For example, if we had, say, 100 patients who had a bp of 150/90, we know that if we didn't treat them for hypertension, then 10 would come to grief in the next ten years. (I made that figure up,but we can make an estimation). If we treated those 100 patients, and reduced their bp to a lower limit, then we know that only 5 would come to grief over the next 10 years.

The problem is, we don't know which 5 come to grief, and which 5 we save.

And we have to poison (sic) 100 patients to get the benefit.

A bit of a simplistic viewpoint, but not far from the truth.


Of course the things that make a big difference are stopping smoking, and choosing different parents.

Good health.
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