Thresholds for Hypertension Definition, Treatment Initiation, and Treatment Targets: Recent Guidelines at a Glance
Emmanuelle Vidal‐Petiot
Abstract
ome physicians may be nostalgic for the years 2011 to 2015, back when most hypertension guidelines agreed to use a threshold of 140/90 mm Hg to define hypertension, to initiate drug treatment, and as a treatment target in the majority of adult patients (except in elderly adults, for whom higher values were tolerated). Since then, one of the most-if not the most-important trial in the field of hypertension, SPRINT (Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial), showed that targeting systolic blood pressure (SBP) <120 mm Hg in patients at high cardiovascular risk resulted in lower rates of cardiovascular events and mortality compared with standard treatment (<140 mm Hg), and led scientific societies to reconsider guidelines.