What Are the Complications of Hypertension?
- Hypertension damages, hardens and narrows your arteries, which requires the heart to work harder to pump blood through the body. This may eventually lead to heart failure.
- Damage to the blood vessels that serve the eyes is a complication of hypertension that can lead to blindness.
- Hypertension can damage or constrict the blood vessels that serve the kidneys, and cause complications such as kidney damage or failure.
- Hypertension increases your risk of developing a condition called metabolic syndrome, which causes problems with metabolism that can later develop into chronic diseases such as diabetes.
- Memory loss, confusion and lack of clarity in communicating with others are neurological complications of hypertension.
- An aneurysm is a ballooning or bulging of a blood vessel that can develop in organs such as the brain, heart or pancreas. This can be fatal if the aneurysm bursts.
- Hypertension can cause a blood clot to develop in the brain, which may either burst or block an artery and result in a life-threatening stroke ("brain attack").