Prehypertension: Does
it really matter?
As
doctors took blood pressure readings on millions
of people over the years, it became clear that
hypertension is a major threat to health, increasing
the risk of stroke, heart attack, congestive
heart failure, kidney failure, and visual loss.
And as data accumulated, it also became clear
that there is no bright line between a healthy
blood pressure and a harmful one; in general,
the lower the pressure, the better.
Nevertheless,
doctors need a target for blood pressure, and
patients also need a goal. Those goals changed
in 2003, bringing the threshold for a normal
blood pressure reading lower than ever before,
at 120/80 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg), and
it also established a new diagnostic category
of "prehypertension" (see table).
Classification
of blood pressure for people 18 years or older
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