Abstract
Statistically, hypertension is harmful because hypertensive people suffer 3 to 4 times more strokes, more myocardial infarctions, and more angina, congestive failure, and renal failure. However, many people have these same high levels of blood pressure and do not get these strokes or myocardial infarctions. Their arteries are seemingly not harmed by the high blood pressure. At the opposite end of the spectrum, patients are often very frightened because three-fourths of their parents or siblings have died of a stroke or have had a coronary death all before the age of 50. Seemingly, the arteries of these families are exceedingly susceptible to relatively mild degrees of hypertension and other risk factors. Actually hypertension would be much less of a problem if it did not involve extra coronary, cerebral, or renal vascular disease. Our findings strongly suggest that with hypertension the blood pressureper seis only one of the determinants of arterial lesions. Other factors apparently are strongly involved and must be considered. Using the antihypertensive treatments of 10 years ago, various trials have indicated that lowering the blood pressure produces only a very small reduction in coronary deaths. In numerical terms, this is certainly the number one complication of hypertension, and the older methods of treatment seemingly cannot solve this problem.
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© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Tobian, L. (1995). The Importance of Potassium for Vascular Protection in A Hypertensive Setting. In: Godfraind, T., Mancia, G., Abbracchio, M.P., Aguilar-Bryan, L., Govoni, S. (eds) Pharmacological Control of Calcium and Potassium Homeostasis. Medical Science Symposia Series, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0117-2_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0117-2_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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