Posts Tagged ‘hypertension’
Joe Elia • December 17th, 2011
A double-blind crossover study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that 3 months of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) in patients with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea ameliorates some components of the metabolic syndrome, which is present in about three quarters of such patients. The authors acknowledge the difficulty of motivating [...]
Joe Elia • June 25th, 2011
Patients’ systolic pressures vary by about 10%, regardless of whether they are measured at home or under the duress of a visit to the doctor. That variation is troubling when deciding whether to put a patient on an antihypertensive regimen: how reliable are the measurements that will form the basis of your decision? How [...]
Joe Elia • May 6th, 2011
European researchers say they’ve got the data to show that restricting salt in the general population is a bad mistake. By implication, the U.S. dietary salt guidelines are plainly wrong. How did they do this? They followed 3700 subjects for roughly 8 years, having first measured their 24-hour urinary sodium excretion. Their data show [...]
Joe Elia • November 19th, 2010
We’ve got Dr. Harlan Krumholz, editor of Journal Watch Cardiology and CardioExchange, to guide us through a week’s worth of the top research presented at the American Heart Association in Chicago. Interview-related links (in the order we discuss them in the interview): CardioExchange (worth checking out — it’s an experiment in the clinical use of [...]
Joe Elia • November 2nd, 2010
OK, now what can be done to control hypertension among African American men? What about recruiting barbershops to put a shoulder to the wheel? They’re community centers, trusted sources of gossip and advice, and places of relaxation. In Texas, a group of researchers undertook a randomized trial in black-owned barbershops in which barbers took [...]
Joe Elia • July 9th, 2010
This week’s interview is with the editorialist commenting on an exciting Lancet paper. The writer, Dr. Gbenga Ogedegbe, says that the work, in which patients with uncontrolled hypertension titrated their own medications according to prespecified rules, could change how clinicians manage uncomplicated hypertension. From his base at New York University School of Medicine, Dr. [...]
