(wsbt.com) — When it comes to blood pressure, 56-year-old Delphine McMillion’s numbers are off the charts.
Delphine McMillion: “I had more than one heart attack on account of my high blood pressure.”
After multiple heart attacks and a stroke in 2004, she was taking 30 pills a day. Still, the needle didn’t budge. For patients like Delphine, medications simply don’t work.
Dr. George Bakris, Hypertension Expert, University of Chicago Medicine: “This subset is really in dire need of this because there’s really nothing else for them.”
But Dr. George Bakris isn’t giving up. He’s hoping a procedure he’s testing at the University of Chicago will yield a new option — a treatment that targets the kidneys.
Dr. Bakris: “The kidney is really the key organ that is sending signals out to the brain, to the heart because it’s the volume organ. It’s the organ that handles volume. So if it’s not getting enough fluid and it’s complaining, it gives the heart instructions and signals to do stuff.”
Signals that tell the body to produce more adrenaline. That surge in adrenaline prompts the heart to constrict its vessels, ramping up pressure. It’s a cascade of events that begins just outside the kidney in the renal artery.
Dr. Sandeep Nathan, interventional cardiologist, University of Chicago Medicine: “The nerves that regulate the flow of adrenalin largely originate from the kidneys.”
(5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)
Loading ...
Loading ...
Has she been checked for adrenal tumors — or sleep apnea, both of which can cause uncontrollable BP
Mine wasn’t that high but was getting harder to control. Spikes close to 200/100. Dr. ordered Doppler and found left renal artery 90% blocked. Stent made MAJOR improvement.
With so many pills a day no wonder her kidneys are stuffed. That’s 10,950 pills in just one year! What puzzles me is that her doctors did not realize after 10 pills a day (3650 a year) that something was not quite right. Hope they will be able to find a solution. Feel very sorry for such patients.
I have uncontrolable high pertention. I have a reaction to all blood pressure med’s. Taking just 1 Avapro 300 per day & think I’m broken out with a horrible rash on my arms,stomach,bottom of back & hips. Itch all over but none of the doctors I’ve gone to can help me, even an allergy doctor. Don’t know what to do, this has been going on for 5 yr’s now.
My BP always reads 150 over 70 and I am on meds, why is the the top so high and never the bottom?
had a hypertensive stroke about 11 years ago, brain bleed on right side. Paralyized on left side. told I would have a 5% chance of surviving, and would never wak again. Today my gait is 90$ of normal, and my hypertension is controlled with 5 meds. Atacand. Atenolol, Potassium, H.C.T., and Felopodine. Hypertension is on both sides of my family. My B.P. was 212/161 when I stroked out.
An international study has been going on on this procedure and it has been named ‘renal denervation’. A web search using this name will get you more info. In the U.S. researchers use microwave probe to zap the renal nerves and disable these nerves going from kidneys to brain and in Germany they also use ultrasound probe instead. From what I’ve read website the conclusions reached so far are:
*Percutaneous, catheter based, therapeutic renal sympathetic denervation is simple and safe
*Significant and sustained reductions in blood pressure were achieved in patients with multi-drug resistant hypertension
*No significant decline in (and suggestion of preservation of) renal function with renal denervation