European Society of Hypertension Scientific Newsletter: control of hypertension in patients with peripheral artery disease.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Denis L Clement.
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Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) of the lower limbs is associated with a high cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Intermittent claudication is the most common symptomatic manifestation of PAD, but is in its own value an important predictor of cardiovascular death, increasing it by three-fold, and increasing all-cause mortality by two-to-five fold. Hypertension is a risk factor for vascular disorders, including PAD. Of hypertensives at presentation, about 2-5% have intermittent claudication, with increasing prevalence with age. Otherwise, 35-55% of patients with PAD at presentation also show hypertension. Patients who suffer from hypertension with PAD have a greatly increased risk of myocardial infarction and stroke. There is no consensus on the specific treatment of hypertension in PAD because of the limited controlled studies on antihypertensive therapy in such specific PAD population. There is an obvious need of such outcome studies, especially since the two conditions are frequently encountered together. However, as risk is high in all PAD patients, the most important goal remains to decrease the global cardiovascular risk in such patients rather than to focus on the control of blood pressure only and on the reduction of symptoms of PAD. Therefore, treatment with antiplatelet drugs, ACE-inhibitors and statins should be considered.
BACKGROUND: It is uncertain whether ambulatory blood-pressure measurements recorded for 24 hours in patients with treated hypertension predict cardiovascular events independently of blood-pressure measurements obtained in the physician's office and other cardiovascular risk factors. METHODS: We assessed the association between base-line ambulatory blood pressures in treated patients and subsequent cardiovascular events among 1963 patients with a median follow-up of 5 years (range, 1 to 66 months). RESULTS: We documented new cardiovascular events in 157 patients. In a Cox proportional-hazards model with adjustment for age, sex, smoking status, presence or absence of diabetes mellitus, serum cholesterol concentration, body-mass index, use or nonuse of lipid-lowering drugs, and presence or absence of a history of cardiovascular events, as well as blood pressure measured at the physician's office, higher mean values for 24-hour ambulatory systolic and diastolic blood pressure were independent risk factors for new cardiovascular events. The adjusted relative risk of cardiovascular events associated with a 1-SD increment in blood pressure was 1.34 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.11 to 1.62) for 24-hour ambulatory systolic blood pressure, 1.30 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.08 to 1.58) for ambulatory systolic blood pressure during the daytime, and 1.27 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.07 to 1.57) for ambulatory systolic blood pressure during the nighttime. For ambulatory diastolic blood pressure, the corresponding relative risks of cardiovascular events associated with a 1-SD increment were 1.21 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.01 to 1.46), 1.24 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.03 to 1.49), and 1.18 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.98 to 1.40). CONCLUSIONS: In patients with treated hypertension, a higher ambulatory systolic or diastolic blood pressure predicts cardiovascular events even after adjustment for classic risk factors including office measurements of blood pressure.
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OBJECTIVE: To examine the association of clinic and ambulatory heart rate with total, cardiovascular, and noncardiovascular death in a cohort of elderly subjects with isolated systolic hypertension from the Systolic Hypertension in Europe Trial. METHODS: A total of 4682 patients participated, whose untreated blood pressure on conventional measurement at baseline was 160 to 219 mm Hg systolic and lower than 95 mm Hg diastolic. Clinic heart rate was the mean of 6 readings during 3 visits. Ambulatory heart rate was recorded with a portable intermittent technique in 807 subjects. RESULTS: Raised baseline clinic heart rate was positively associated with a worse prognosis for total, cardiovascular, and noncardiovascular mortality among the 2293 men and women taking placebo. Subjects with heart rates higher than 79 beats/min (bpm) (top quintile) had a 1.89 times greater risk of mortality than subjects with heart rate lower than or equal to 79 bpm (95% confidence interval, 1.33-2.68 bpm). In a Cox regression analysis, predictors of time to death were heart rate (P<.001), age (P<.001), serum creatinine level (P =.001), presence of diabetes (P =.002), previous cardiovascular disease (P =.01), triglyceride readings (P =.02), smoking (P =.04), and elevated systolic blood pressure (P =.05), while total cholesterol level was found to be nonsignificant in the model. In the ambulatory monitoring subgroup, clinic and ambulatory heart rates predicted noncardiovascular but not cardiovascular mortality. However, in a Cox regression analysis in which clinic and ambulatory heart rates were included, a significant association with noncardiovascular mortality was found only for clinic heart rate (P =.004). In the active treatment group, the weak predictive power of clinic heart rate for mortality disappeared after adjustment for confounders. CONCLUSIONS: In untreated older patients with isolated systolic hypertension, a clinic heart rate greater than 79 bpm was a significant predictor of all-cause, cardiovascular, and noncardiovascular mortality. Ambulatory heart rate did not add prognostic information to that provided by clinic heart rate.