This book gives health care providers encompassing, detailed information on hypertension and also furnishes tools for promoting wellness. Hypertension Management: Clinical Pathways, Guidelines, and Patient Education contains an abundance of clinical guidelines which serve as a basis for clinicians pursuing disease management. In addition, this essential resource contains more than 100 easy-to-understand patient education sheets, which teach patients and their families how to take an active role in managing their high blood pressure.

The book combines comprehensive coverage of various aspects of hypertension with guidance in conveying important concepts, knowledge, and advice to patients. The result is a highly useful tool for achieving clinically successful, cost-effective pharmaceutical care for hypertensive patients, and for reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with this devastating disease state. Book jacket.

Research shows that African-Caribbean populations with hypertension have poorer health outcomes. This exploratory and descriptive study described and analyzed self-management behavior among male and female hypertensive residents of a village in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). This qualitative study took place in Lowmans Windward village in SVG. In-depth semi structured interviews were conducted with a purposive, snowball sample of 15 females and 15 males. Most participants were poor but all had access to governmentally funded health care. Non-adherence to medical recommendations on physical activity and dietary intake was evidenced among all participants. Over 80% of participants did not own a blood pressure monitoring equipment. Females rendered more support to their spouses than they themselves received from husbands. More than 60% of participants used herbs and home remedies to control their blood pressure. More males reported social support than females. Results generally show that self-management of hypertension behaviors among both female and male residents of SVG are not extensive and that preventive behaviors can be enhanced with adequate dietary intake, daily physical activity and frequent self-blood pressure Monitoring.

An essential resource for all cardiologists, internists, and medical residents, Pharmacological Management of Hypertension and Dyslipidemia assists clinicians in the treatment of hypertension and high cholesterol, the two most easily diagnosed and treatable risk factors for cardiovascular disease. This concise yet complete handbook includes the scientific background for each drug class presented, and includes a review of the science supporting the utilization of the agents in particular patient situations. The medications and their doses and dosage forms are presented in easy to use tables, so that the practitioners can quickly access the information to make their treatment decisions, whether they are in the hospital or in an outpatient setting.

In the thirty years since the advent of efTective pharmacologic treatment for hypertension, the world ofthe hypertensive has been transformed beyond recog nition. The first change involved only malignant hypertensives with enough residual renal parenchyma to survive. Such a hypertensive could trade inevitable renal failure - unless an intracerebral bleed occurred first - for a rigid regimen which prevented his blood pressure from destroying him but which was asso ciated with nearly intolerable side effects. Over the next 20 years, increasing numbers of patients with hypertension of decreasing severity were treated with drugs that had fewer and fewer side effects. In 1970, with the medical world finally ready to accept the concept, the well-known Veterans Administration Study demonstrated that morbidity and mortality could be diminished in mode rately hypertensive patients by antihypertensive therapy that had minimal side effects. As a result there has been a major attempt to bring everyone with elevated blood pressure under lifelong pharmacologic control. It is difficult, however, to know what levels ofblood pressure deserve treatment; many who, when therapy first became available, would not have even been considered hypertensive are now candidates for treatment. The lower the pressure, the larger the potential population to be treated, but the smaller the individual risk and hence the smaller the possible benefit. The point where decades of diminished quaiity of life from treatment begins to outweigh a possible late-life complication is yet to be de termined.

This book is a valuable tool to assist both cardiovascular physicians and scientists learning the intricacies of hypertension research and its milestone studies. All major hypertension trials have been reviewed in this book in chronological order with extensive discussion of the study population, study design, and outcomes and with a special focus on what knowledge they offered, their strengths and weaknesses, statistical errors, impact on international guidelines and unmet needs. Importantly, the book also offers physicians and young scientists with basic knowledge regarding medical biostatistics. It is of critical importance for a scientist involved in the field to understand deeply the process of analyzing medical data. Moreover, the accurate interpretation of the results is central for applying evidence-based medicine in everyday clinical practice. Management of Hypertension: Current Practice and the Application of Landmark Trials is a critical tool to assist in the education of physicians and researchers in the field, providing a separate section on pioneer researchers in hypertension and urging readers to become bright exemplars for scientists wishing to pursue a career in academic medicine and hypertension research.

The treatment of hypertension is now evolving into a decision-making process of ever greater complexity. Not only has the range of drugs available increased but so too has our knowledge of the diversity of individual patients' responsiveness to therapy, and the need to tailor their treatment with reference to a wide variety of additional factors. In order to provide effective patient care, the clinician needs to be aware of all the options available, but also of the evidence supporting their use and the extent to which that evidence justifies the choices made. In this new volume, leading authorities in their fields draw on the available evidence to provide answers to a series of key clinical questions facing the clinician treating hypertension: Should we treat prehypertension? How does the choice of therapy change in the presence of comorbidities such as obesity, ischemic heart disease, left ventricular hypertrophy, diabetes or cerebrovascular disease? Evidence-based Management of Hypertension provides answers to these and many other questions, as the authors present an expert analysis of the available evidence and offer authoritative recommendations for treatment planning. In each chapter, tables highlight evidence from a variety of sources, and every chapter concludes with a series of key practice points that present a summary of evidence-based recommendations for best practice, graded according to the quality of that evidence. For any clinician concerned with the care of the hypertensive patient, this volume will be a valuable aid to treatment planning and long-term management.

Abstract: Recommendations based on the consensus statement of the National High Blood Pressure Education Program related to diet and high blood pressure are given. Dietary factors (body weight and sodium intake) are implicated in the pathogenesis of hypertension and the effectiveness of dietary management. Nine recommendations each are given for weight reduction and sodium intake modification. Caveats recommend that when caloric intake and/or sodium restriction do not achieve weight loss, adequate drug therapy should be used. (kbc).