Hypertension Hurts Kids, Too!

Ivanhoe Newswire
Wednesday, August 22, 2007; 12:00 AM

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Adults aren't the only ones at risk for hypertension. A recent study reveals many children and adolescents who suffer from this condition may go undiagnosed.

Hypertension is a dangerous condition marked by constant elevation of a person's blood pressure. Potential risk factors for hypertension include high cholesterol, family history of hypertension, diabetes, poor eating habits, sedentary lifestyle, high alcohol intake and use of birth control pills. If left untreated, hypertension can cause complications leading to stroke, heart attacks and even aneurysms.

Many people associate hypertension with adults, but a recent study reveals the chronic condition is also fairly common in children. Though widespread, study authors report hypertension can be difficult to diagnose in children and adolescents because abnormal blood pressure values tend to fluctuate with age, height and sex.

When researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland studied 14,187 children and teens, they found 74 percent of the 507 participants who tested positive for hypertension were undiagnosed. Roughly 3 percent of study participants suffered from prehypertension, but only 55 percent of them had documentation of elevated blood pressure or hypertension in their electronic medical records.

Based on the results of the study, researchers concluded the more elevated blood pressure readings a child had, the higher his or her risk for developing hypertension. "If abnormal blood pressure is not identified by a patient's pediatric clinician, it may be years before the abnormal blood pressure is detected, leading to end-organ damage," study authors write. "Because effective treatments for abnormal blood pressure exist, these long-term sequelae can be avoided with early diagnosis."

According to researchers, fewer children would go undiagnosed for hypertension if doctors would consider using electronic medical records to track blood pressure changes. "The relatively poor identification of abnormal blood pressure could be remedied by a clinical decision support algorithm built into an electronic medical record that would automatically review current and prior blood pressures, ages, heights and sex to determine if abnormal blood pressure criteria had been met," study authors write. "In addition, the clinical decision support algorithm could provide guideline-based evaluation, treatment, and parent/patient education materials to the clinician."

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SOURCE: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 2007;298:874-879