80 mm Hg is considered to be high pressure. High pressure raises the risk of heart, kidney, vessel diseases (atherosclerosis), eye-leisure and cerebrovascular accident or stroke.

What are the causes of hypotension?

The conditions which reduce the blood volume, reduce the heart production (and amount of blood pumped by heart) and medicines are the frequent causes of hypotension.

Dehydration is common in patients having long nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. A great amount of water is released in the process of vomiting and diarrhea, especially, if a patient does not drink the necessary amount of water to replace the water which left the organism.The other causes of water loss by the organism are severe sweating, high temperature and thermal stroke. People having moderate dehydration may only suffer from thirst and dry mouth. The transition from moderate dehydration to severe dehydration may cause orthostatic hypotension (its symptoms are weakness, giddiness). Long, severe dehydration may result in shock, renal failure, matters related to acidosis (too much acid in blood), coma and even death.
Moderate or severe bleeding may fast reduce the amount of blood in the body resulting in low pressure or orthostatic hypotension. The bleeding may be caused by injury, surgery complications or gastrointestinal pathologies, such as ulcers, tumors. Sometimes bleeding may be so heavy and fast (e.g. bleeding in case of aorta injure) that it causes shock and short death.
Severe inflammation, such as acute pancreatitis, may cause pressure reduction. In pancreatitis a fluid from the blood vessels goes into the inflamed tissues around pancreas reducing the volume of blood.
Amyocardia may conduce to reduction of an amount of blood to be pumped by heart. One of common causes of amyocardia is a death of a part of myocardium due to one extensive infarction or several not so severe infarctions. The other causes which may weaken heart, are some medicines, viral infections and heart diseases, such as aortic stenosis (constriction of aorta).
Pericarditis is an inflammation of pericardium (“bursa” surrounding heart). Pericarditis may promote fluid accumulation within the pericardium and thereby “compress” heart restricting its ability to be filled and pump the blood.
Pulmonary embolism is a condition when blood clot in the vein “migrates” into the lung with blood flow. A big thrombus may block blood flow from the lungs into the left ventricle of heart, and reduce dramatically an amount of blood returning to heart. Pulmonary embolism is an abnormally dangerous satiation for life.
Slow rhythm of heartbeats (bradycardia) may reduce an amount of blood pumped by heart. When myocardium is relaxed the heart rate of a healthy adult man ranges from 60 to 100 beats per minute. Reduced pressure is not always present in bradycardia (heart rate is less than 60 bets per minute when myocardium is relaxed). Actually, the heart rate of some athletes may be from 40 to 50 beats per minute without any symptoms when myocardium is relaxed. (Slow heart rate is compensated by heartbeats pumping more blood than that of non-athletes). But bradycardia may cause low pressure, weakness, giddiness in many patients with this disease.

What is hypertension?

Hypertension (arterial hypertension) or high blood pressureis an elevated arterial pressure (in the vessels carrying blood from heart to the organs and body cells). High arterial pressure is not equal to the higher emotional stress, although emotions and stress may cause rise in blood pressure from time to time. Normal blood pressure is 120/80 mm Hg, if blood pressure is higher than 120/80 mm Hg and lower than 139/89 mm Hg, it should be considered that a man is in “pre-hypertensic condition”. Blood pressure of 140/90 mm Hg and above is considered to be high pressure.

When measuring blood pressure the upper figure is a systolic pressure which shows arterial pressure at the moment of heart compression and when heart pushes out blood into arteries. Lower figure is a diastolic pressure indicating arterial pressure at the moment of myocardium relaxing. Diastolic pressure is a minimal arterial pressure.

With the systolic and/ or diastolic pressure increase the risk of heart, kidney diseases, induration of walls of arteries (atherosclerosis or arteriosclerosis), eye diseases and stroke (brain damage) becomes higher. Due to chronic (durative) exposure to high blood pressure the complications of hypertension which are the injuries of different organs, develop frequently. In this case it is very important to identify hypertension in time because the complications may be prevented only if blood pressure is normalized. As previously thought, diastolic pressure increase is more dangerous for the body than systolic pressure increase, but the latest research have shown that systolic pressure increase is more dangerous for the people aged 50 years and older.

Hypertension is a common problem. Approximately, every fourth inhabitant of the planet suffers from it.

High blood pressure symptoms

If the pressure is raised without any complication the patient may feel nothing that is why hypertension is commonly called a “silent killer”. This name is true because the disease may develop without any blood pressure symptomsuntil deathful complications such as infarction and stroke is evident. Hypertension may lasts without any symptoms for years and even decades. If there is no symptoms people do not measure blood pressure frequently.

Sometimes, noncomplicated hypertension has the followingblood pressure symptoms: headache, giddiness, dyspnea, visual impairment. Although these symptoms are not pleasant to deal with, due to them a man may think about his/ her health, visit a doctor and will be disciplined in taking the indicated medicines. But commonly a man visits a doctor when hypertension has significantly interfered with the body. In many cases a patient finds himself/herself in hospital, sometimes by ambulance after infarction, stroke, acute renal failure or significant sight reduction (due to retinal injures). The more information about hypertension danger and possibilities of measurement of blood pressure, the less patients with complications will be.

Approximately, every hundredth patient suffering from hypertension (1%) visits a doctor first time having very high blood pressure (galloping or malignant hypertension). These patients have a diastolic (minimum) pressure higher than 140 mm Hg! With such a high pressure the patients suffer from acute headache, nausea, visual impairment and sometimes renal failure. Malignant hypertension is a very dangerous disease which requires immediate treatment in order to avoid cerebrovascular disease (stroke).

How to measure the organ damage in hypertension?

As stated above, constant high blood pressure adversely affects the whole body and may cause the following damages: heart expansion, renal failure, damages of brain or nervous system, nonreversible change in the retina. When examining eye grounds in patients suffering from hypertension, a doctor may identify damages, capillary constriction, little meningeal hemorrhages and edema of ophthalmic nerve. Subject to the extent of the damage a doctor may determine the severity of hypertension.

In high blood pressure peripheral arteries of all tissue of the body become less elastic, their resistance is increased. Therefore, myocardium has to push blood into vessels making more efforts. Heart load increase may cause different diseases, commonly their first characteristic is heart expansion. Heart expansion is determined using the following researches: chest x-ray examination, electrocardiogram and the most accurate method, echocardiography (cardiac ultrasound examination).

Echocardiography is especially useful when it is necessary to measure left ventricle thickness (expansion) and left atrium thickness (main working area of heart). Heart expansion may be the precursor of heart failure, coronary heart disease and heart rhythm disorder (arrhythmia). In case of proper treatment of hypertension and the complications induced by it, some functions of heart which were lost may be restored.

In hypertension renal abnormalities are determined by blood and urine examination. (Renal diseases may both result in and result from hypertension). Blood serum creatinine level should be measured in order to analyze renal functions. The creatinine level is increased in renal disease. Besides, the presence of protein in urine witnesses of damage of kidneys due to high blood pressure, even if the blood examination shows that the kidneys work well. The presence of protein in urine if the blood examination is normal means that if the patient will not begin to be treated for hypertension, the renal function will be damaged too. Even little amount of protein (microalbuminuria) is a reason to think about it and normalize your blood pressure in order to avoid renal failure, vascular diseases ant other complications. In this case the patients of African race have higher risk of hypertension complications (especially renal diseases) than, for instance, the Caucasians.

If hypertension will not be treated you may end up by stroke which may damage brain and other parts of the nervous system. Stroke occurs due to hemorrhage or thrombus formation in blood vessels which deliver blood to brain. To estimate a damage induced by stroke special examination is carried out, the stroke symptoms and manifestations are analyzed. Stroke may result in weakness, tremor or extremity paralysis, speech or sight disorder. Numerous microstrokes result in dementia(mental disorder). To avoid these terrible complications and any other complications caused by hypertension at all, it is necessary to maintain blood pressure at a normal level. According to the recent research, the medicines of a group of angiotensin receptor blockers may be used as additional preventive measure against stroke. These medicines also normalize blood pressure.

First Aid

Wednesday, March 9, 2011