Hypertension has the highest prevalence among subjects older than 65 years. In this age group, more than 50% of subjects have a blood pressure greater than 140/90 mmHg and the elevated pressure is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular complications including stroke and dementia.
One of the main characteristic of hypertension in the very elderly is isolated systolic hypertension with a high systolic and low diastolic blood pressure reflecting the increase in arterial stiffness developing with age. The treatment of hypertension in the elderly has always generated many clinical questions, which will be addressed in this Research Topic dedicated to hypertension in the elderly.
What is the ideal target blood pressure to achieve in this patients population? Should we be more or less aggressive? How should we integrate the patient’s frailty profile in our decision to initiate anti-hypertensive therapy? Is there a time at which drug therapy could be withhold because the benefits of treatments are inferior to the risks? One could also question whether there are still gender differences, as patients get older and whether problems of adherence are becoming more prominent because of co-morbidities and complex therapies.
The main objective of this Research Topic is to discuss these important issues, which are part of our daily questions in clinical practice.
Hypertension has the highest prevalence among subjects older than 65 years. In this age group, more than 50% of subjects have a blood pressure greater than 140/90 mmHg and the elevated pressure is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular complications including stroke and dementia.
One of the main characteristic of hypertension in the very elderly is isolated systolic hypertension with a high systolic and low diastolic blood pressure reflecting the increase in arterial stiffness developing with age. The treatment of hypertension in the elderly has always generated many clinical questions, which will be addressed in this Research Topic dedicated to hypertension in the elderly.
What is the ideal target blood pressure to achieve in this patients population? Should we be more or less aggressive? How should we integrate the patient’s frailty profile in our decision to initiate anti-hypertensive therapy? Is there a time at which drug therapy could be withhold because the benefits of treatments are inferior to the risks? One could also question whether there are still gender differences, as patients get older and whether problems of adherence are becoming more prominent because of co-morbidities and complex therapies.
The main objective of this Research Topic is to discuss these important issues, which are part of our daily questions in clinical practice.