Blood pressure guidelines: beyond simple targets

Abstract

Hypertension and blood pressure guidelines have developed incrementally over the years, keeping pace, and now outstripping, the clinical trials that have fuelled their opinions and recommendations. The focus has been very much on treatment thresholds and targets, so well suited to the medical model. However, the routine approach to blood pressure reduction in individuals of high cardiovascular risk, irrespective of their pressure and without a target, seem to slipped under the radar of the guidelines. It is time to rectify this significant oversight and take a broader view of treatment paradigms other than those based simply on targets. Cardiovasc Endocrinol 00:000–000 Copyright © 2015 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.