(University of California, San Francisco) – A patient who cites hypertension as a reason for a doctor’s visit is more than twice as likely to be prescribed a new medicine than a patient who doesn’t speak up, according to a recent study by researchers at UCSF and UCLA.
The study suggests the importance of patients feeling empowered to monitor their own health and asking their doctors for options to treat high blood pressure, researchers say.
The findings, recently published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, revealed that if blood pressure was not a reason for a clinic visit, a new medicine was prescribed 16 percent of the time. But if hypertension was a stated reason for the visit, a new medicine was prescribed 30 percent of the time. The adjusted odds were 2.6, which were highly statistically significant.
“We were all surprised the rate was as low as it was,” said the study’s primary author Raman Khanna, MD, MAS, assistant clinical professor of the UCSF Department of Medicine. “This means that you would have to visit your doctor more than five times with high blood pressure before they would add or change a blood pressure medication. Saying, ‘I’m here for hypertension’ or ‘I’m here for my blood pressure check’ made a world of difference.”
Almost one-third of American adults — or 74.5 million people — have been diagnosed with hypertension, or high blood pressure, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It typically can be controlled with diet, exercise or medication.
But if left uncontrolled, hypertension can sometimes lead to heart attack, stroke and kidney disease.
Researchers were interested in studying this uncontrolled patient population. They analyzed clinic data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS), focusing on people with uncontrolled hypertension. The researchers categorized “uncontrolled hypertension patients” as those with a diagnosis of hypertension and a visit blood pressure greater than 140/90.
The NAMCS data was based on 7,153 doctor’s offices visits representing 260 million office visits throughout the country. The people in the study fit the criteria of uncontrolled hypertensive patients. The data was collected by census workers who went from practice to practice during 2005 through 2009.
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