U.S. task force issues blood pressure guidelines
Patients do better when they receive care from a team of health professionals.
(HealthDay) -- "Team-based care" should be used to improve patients' blood pressure control, the U.S. Task Force on Community Preventive Services recommended on Tuesday.
The recommendation is based on a review of 77 studies that showed improvements in patients' control of blood pressure when they received care from a team of health professionals -- a primary care doctor supported by a pharmacist, nurse, dietitian, social worker, or community health worker -- rather than a primary care doctor alone.
The task force found that team-based care increased the percentage of patients with controlled blood pressure, led to a decrease in both systolic (top number) and diastolic (bottom number) blood pressure, and improved results in patients with diabetes and elevated levels of blood fats.
Team members assist primary care doctors by providing support and sharing responsibility for high blood pressure care (such as managing medications), doing patient follow-up, and helping patients stick to their blood pressure control plan. Such a plan includes routinely monitoring blood pressure, taking medications as prescribed, reducing sodium in the diet, and increasing physical activity.
The review found that the greatest improvements in blood pressure occurred when team members could change medications independently or with the approval of the primary care doctor. Improvements were not as great when team members were only permitted to oversee patients' taking of medications.
"Adoption of this model throughout the United States would improve blood pressure control for the 68 million adult Americans who have high blood pressure and reduce their risk of heart attack, stroke, and other health problems," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a CDC release.
"This analysis shows that when primary care physicians and other health care professionals with different expertise and approaches work together to support their patients, they can find the right formula for getting blood pressure under control," he added.
The CDC provides ongoing scientific and other support for the task force, which published its findings in the Guide to Community Preventive Services.
Complete findings from this review are expected to be published in May 2013.
High blood pressure was the main or a contributing cause of approximately 336,000 American deaths in 2007. If all people with high blood pressure were treated under the current clinical guidelines, it's estimated that 46,000 lives could be saved each year, the CDC said.
Team-based care is a major component of the Million Hearts initiative launched in September 2011 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The goal of the initiative is to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes in the United States over five years.
More information: The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more about treating high blood pressure.
Copyright © 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
-
Home telemonitoring by pharmacists helps control patients' blood pressure
May 10, 2012 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Black and south Asian people benefiting less from interventions to reduce blood pressure, says study
Nov 10, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Take your blood pressure meds before bed
Oct 24, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
High blood pressure still sneaking past doctors, study shows
May 01, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Blood pressure, cholesterol go untreated in US
Feb 01, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Motion perception revisited: High Phi effect challenges established motion perception assumptions
Apr 23, 2013 |
3 / 5 (2) |
2
-
Anything you can do I can do better: Neuromolecular foundations of the superiority illusion (Update)
Apr 02, 2013 |
4.5 / 5 (11) |
5
-
The visual system as economist: Neural resource allocation in visual adaptation
Mar 30, 2013 |
5 / 5 (2) |
9
-
Separate lives: Neuronal and organismal lifespans decoupled
Mar 27, 2013 |
4.9 / 5 (8) |
0
-
Sizing things up: The evolutionary neurobiology of scale invariance
Feb 28, 2013 |
4.8 / 5 (10) |
14
-
Classical and Quantum Mechanics via Lie algebras
Apr 15, 2011
- More from Physics Forums - Independent Research
More news stories
Survey reveals the success of personal budgets in social care
Over 70 per cent of people who hold a personal budget for social care said it led to greater independence and support according to the latest survey.
Health
2 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Scientists develop smartphone 'assistance agent' for older people
A new smartphone application, developed by scientists at the University of Ulster, which could help older people engage fully in an increasingly self-serve society, may be ready for use by the end of the ...
Health
2 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Can you put a price on health?
As health services strive to improve quality and reduce costs, researchers study the benefits – and the pitfalls – of 'pay for performance' in hospitals.
Health
2 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
|
Air travel during pregnancy poses no significant risk, say experts
(Medical Xpress)—There is no significant risk directly associated with air travel during pregnancy, even at advanced gestation, says report by the University of Liverpool.
Health
3 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
50 percent of Australians who oppose vaccination get their information from the Internet
To coincide with the broadcast of Jabbed: Love, Fear and Vaccines (SBS ONE, Sunday 26 May at 8.30pm) the first ever national survey on Australian attitudes to vaccination reveals surprising statistics including half of Australians ...
Health
3 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Researchers suggest boosting body's natural flu killers
A known difficulty in fighting influenza (flu) is the ability of the flu viruses to mutate and thus evade various medications that were previously found to be effective. Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have ...
Second-generation TAVI device—Lotus Valve—shows good performance in REPRISE II
22 May 2013, Paris, France: The Lotus Valve, a second-generation transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) device, was successfully implanted in all of the first 60 patients in results from REPRISE II reported at EuroPCR ...
Major human drug trial underway for Alzheimer's
A potentially ground-breaking human drug trial is currently underway, which aims to discover whether blood pressure medication can slow or halt the progression of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). This is the latest ...
Pay attention: How we focus and concentrate
Scientists at Newcastle University have shed new light on how the brain tunes in to relevant information.
New discovery in fight against deadly meningococcal disease
Professor Michael Jennings, Deputy Director of the Institute for Glycomics at Griffith University, was part of an international team that discovered the previously unknown pathway of how the bacterium colonizes people.
Are kids who take music lessons different from other kids?
(Medical Xpress)—Research by U of T Mississauga psychology professor Glenn Schellenberg reveals that two key personality traits – openness-to-experience and conscientiousness—predict better than IQ ...