The Effects of Uncontrolled Hypertension
- Your blood pressure is high if it measures 140/90 mm Hg or more.blood pressure appareil image by Maciej Mamro from Fotolia.com
Hypertension, also called high blood pressure, occurs when the pressure in your blood vessels reads 140/90 mm Hg or greater. Uncontrolled hypertension refers to high blood pressure that is either not under the control of medications or does not respond to medication. Many serious health effects such as heart attacks, strokes and vision abnormalities result from hypertension. Research by Dr. Thomas Wang and Dr. Ramachandran Vasan indicates several factors leading to uncontrolled hypertension, including ethnicity, socioeconomic status, cost of medication, lack of knowledge by patients, and even a lack of compliance to medical guidelines by physicians. - An aneurysm is the swelling of a portion of a blood vessel, usually an artery, where the vessel walls have weakened. Aneurysms commonly occur in the aorta, the artery that carries oxygen-rich blood to feed the rest of the body. These bulging areas present health dangers since aneurysms can burst with no warning, resulting in internal bleeding or hemorrhaging and, ultimately, death. High blood pressure, according to the Rush University Medical Center website, can contribute to the formation of aneurysms.
- Hypertension contributes to atherosclerosis, the loss of elasticity in the arteries. Atherosclerosis occurs when the arteries of the body become clogged with fatty deposits. Blood clots form, which may break away from their origins to become lodged elsewhere in the body and block blood flow through other blood vessels, leading to strokes and heart attacks.
- A study by Dr. Christopher Brady and colleagues from the Veterans Affairs (VA) Boston Healthcare System, Harvard Medical School and the Boston University School of Public Health suggests that uncontrolled hypertension in men may lead to decreased cognitive functions. The study, beginning in 1963, followed 357 men with an average age of 67 years. Research indicated that although advanced age did result in problems with cognition, those men with uncontrolled high blood pressure performed much poorer on cognitive tests measuring verbal fluency and short-term memory. The authors concluded that the cognitive deficiencies they observed may have resulted from not controlling blood pressure and were not due to old age alone.
- End organ damage occurs when those organs nourished by the blood supply, such as the eyes, become damaged because of uncontrolled hypertension. The retinas of the eyes are especially sensitive to changes in blood flow. Examination of the eyes of patients with high blood pressure reveals bleeding or hemorrhaging in the retina and abnormal enlargement of the eye nerve, reports MedicineNet.com. These structural defects directly correlate to vision trouble.
- Heart attacks and strokes happen when blood clots form or travel to the arteries feeding the heart or the brain, respectively, and cut off circulation to these areas. High blood pressure is one of the greatest risk factors for strokes and heart attacks. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reports that 750,000 New Yorkers are at risk of either having a heart attack or stroke. Of the 1.5 million people in New York living with hypertension, 53 percent of these cases are not under control.
- Dr. Simon Stewart, lead author of The Heart of Soweto Study, stated that research confirmed African black patients were particularly sensitive to heart failure due to uncontrolled high blood pressure. The researchers focused on 844 recently-diagnosed heart failure patients and found that 88 percent were African blacks, with an average age of 55 years. In addition, women constituted 57 percent of the cases. Hypertension was the most common cardiovascular risk factor in the study.
