Clinical Profile of Patients with Hypertensive Crisis Presenting to an Emergency Department of a Tertiary Care Hospital in Western India

Abstract

A hospital-based retrospective study was undertaken among the adult patients presenting to document the incidence of hypertensive urgency (HTN-U) and emergency while the secondary objectives included clinical presentations, disposition from emergency room, and inhospital mortality. All patients were evaluated by vital signs, clinical examination as well as relevant laboratory tests and radiological tests. Patients with target organ damage were grouped under the hypertensive emergency (HTN-E) group (n = 104) and patients without target organ damage were included under the HTN-U group (n = 52). The data were analyzed using GraphPad Prism (vs. 9.4.1) and MedCalc (vs. 20.118). The incidence of HTN-E and HTN-U was 68.4% and 31.6%, respectively. The most common symptom observed in patients with HTN-E was breathlessness (53.8%), followed by chest pain (34.6%) and headache (27.9%). While, in HTN-U patients, most patients reported chest pain (43.8%), headache (39.6%), and epistaxis (22.9%). Majority of the patients in both the groups presented with signs of tachycardia, tachypnea, and hypoxia. The mortality in HTN-E and HTN-U patients was 15.4% and 2.1%, respectively. Among 104 patients with HTN-E, 53.8% each of the patients had acute heart failure and acute pulmonary edema. While, in HTN-U patients, acute pulmonary edema and acute coronary syndrome were observed in 2.1% each of the study subjects. Patients at high risk or end-organ damage should be immediately referred to the emergency department from the outpatient settings, as a rapid reduction in blood pressure is essential over minutes to hours, to prevent further organ damage.