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Blood pressure management in older people: balancing the risks
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  • Published on: 3 June 2018
    The role of the dedicated nurse practitioner and other issues

    I agree with the authors of this excellent review that blood pressure(BP) measurement is often performed carelessly, and this is true both in primary and in secondary care. Although both doctors and nurses are responsible for this state of affairs, appropriately trained and dedicated(in terms of their job description) nurse practitioners are the ones who would be best placed to comply with the requirements for correct blood pressure measurement within "real world" time constraints(1). My proposal is to allocate a 10-15 minute slot for the nurse practitioner to measure the blood pressure in the relaxed environment of her own consulting room. Thereafter she can hand the patient over to the doctor to fulfil his own 10 minute or so time slot.
    Choice of diuretic medication for management of hypertension is the other issue specially relevant to the elderly. Although diuretics of first choice for antihypertensive treatment are typically either thiazides or indapamide, what needs to be recognised is that susceptibility to diuretic-related hyponatraemia involving those two drug subclasses is uniquely age-related, patients aged 60 or more being the ones most vulnerable to this complication(2)(3)(4)(5)(6). It is even conceivable that symptoms of drug-related hyponatraemia such as falls(2)(3) , might, on occasion, be misattributed to attainment of goal blood pressure, even if that target blood pressure is a modest one, with the consequence that antihypertensive...

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    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.