New guidelines on diagnosing high blood pressure could mean thousands more people benefit from treatment in England and Wales. Health bosses say offering blood-pressure-lowering drugs to more people with stage-1 hypertension would help to cut heart attacks and strokes.
In total, around 450,000 men and 270,000 women could now qualify for the drugs. However, some GPs expressed concerns about over-diagnosis saying the benefits could be limited. They said lifestyle factors such as weight control, diet and exercise all had an important role to play in bringing down blood pressure.
Currently, people with high blood pressure are offered treatment if they have a 20% risk of cardiovascular disease over 10 years and are aged under 80.
The draft guidelines, announced by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), recommend that people with a 10% risk should now qualify.
This assessment score is based on a blood test several risk factors, including:
- age
- sex
- family history
- smoking
- obesity
- alcohol
NICE said it was difficult to predict the impact of lowering the threshold because some people in this group may already be taking blood-pressure-lowering drugs.
The long-term plan for NHS in England contains a commitment to diagnosing high blood pressure earlier and saving lives for heart attacks and strokes. High blood pressure affects more than one in four adults in England, accounts for more than one in 10 visits to a GP and contributes to 75,000 deaths every year but millions of people are thought to go through there lives undiagnosed.
Metabolic medicine consultant Anthony Wierzbicki, who chairs the NICE guideline committee, said high blood pressure was “by far the biggest preventable cause of death and disability in the UK through strokes, heart attacks and heart failure”.
He added: “A rigorous evaluation of new evidence has resulted in updated recommendations around when to treat raised blood pressure that have the potential to make a real difference to the lives of many thousands of people with the condition,”.
Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, who chairs the Royal College of GPs, said the decision to lower the threshold for a diagnosis of hypertension, or high blood pressure, “must not be taken lightly and must be evidence-based”.
She added: “GPs are highly trained to prescribe taking into account the guidelines but also the circumstances of the individual patient sitting in front of them, including physical, physiological and social factors that might be affecting their health.”
A consultation on the draft guidance will close on 23 April.
