Unsolved Problem: (Isolated) Systolic Hypertension with Diastolic Blood Pressure below the Safety Margin

Abstract

The problem of high systolic blood pressure (sBP) combined with low diastolic blood pressure (dBP) requires attention because sBP is directly and continuously related to the most important criterion, i.e., all-cause mortality, whereas dBP becomes inversely related to it after the age of 50–60 years. The European Society of Cardiology and European Society of ­Hypertension (ESC/ESH) 2018 guidelines for hypertension (HTN) are helpful because they recommend a lower safety cut-off for in-treatment dBP. To prevent tissue hypoperfusion, these guidelines recommend that dBP should be ≥70 mm Hg during treatment. A patient with very elevated sBP (e.g., 220 mm Hg) and low dBP (e.g., 65 mm Hg) is difficult to treat if one strictly follows the guidelines. In this situation, the sBP is a clear indication for antihypertensive treatment, but the dBP is a relative contraindication (as it is <70 mm Hg, a safety margin recognized by the 2018 ESC/ESH guidelines). The dilemma about whether or not to treat isolated systolic hypertension (SH) patients with low dBP (<70 mm Hg) is evident from the fact that almost half (45%) remain untreated. This is a common occurrence and identifying this problem is the first step to solving it. We suggest that an adequate search and analysis should be performed, starting from the exploration of the prognosis of the isolated (I)SH subset of patients with a very low dBP (<70 mm Hg) at the beginning of already performed randomized clinical trials.