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Summary & Participants

It's no secret that high blood pressure, or hypertension, is a serious medical problem. But most people think hypertension is mainly a risk factor for heart attack or stroke. In fact, unchecked high blood pressure might also put you in danger of developing kidney disease. Join our panel as they discuss the dangers of high blood pressure, and offer measures you can take to cut your risks of developing kidney disease.

Medically Reviewed On: May 29, 2005

Webcast Transcript

LISA CLARK: I'm Lisa Clark. Welcome, and thanks for joining us for our webcast. It's no secret that high blood pressure, or hypertension, is a serious medical problem, but most people think hypertension is mainly a risk factor for heart attack or stroke. In fact, unchecked high blood pressure might also put you in danger of developing kidney disease. For the next few minutes we'll take a look at how dangerous this can be and look at ways that you can cut your risk.

Joining our discussion this evening, Dr. Leonard Stern. Welcome, and thank you for joining us. Also, Dr. Jai Radhakrishnan. Welcome. Thanks for being here.

I guess we should start with a basic discussion of hypertension. Jai, I'll throw that one to you.

JAI RADHAKRISHNAN, MD: Hypertension refers to high blood pressure, very simply, so the question obviously comes up, "Is there a magic number above or which we say blood pressure is normal?" It's really a function of trials that have looked at outcomes and measuring what blood pressure is associated with a bad outcome. Currently our definition of hypertension is if the top, or systolic, blood pressure is over 140 and of the bottom, or diastolic, blood pressure is over 90 mm of mercury.

LISA CLARK: This is not related to whatever your heartbeat rate might be. This is a completely different measurement.

JAI RADHAKRISHNAN, MD: Blood pressure is really a composite measurement of what the heart puts out, which is cardiac output, and how tightly the blood vessels are squeezed, which is vascular resistance. So blood pressure is essentially a product of these two factors. So you could have a high blood pressure if the heart output goes up or if the vessels are tightly squeezed.

LISA CLARK: Len, high blood pressure is often called the silent killer, and as a result many people are unaware they have the problem. While we're staying with this topic, let's talk about some of the risk factors for hypertension.

LEONARD STERN, MD: One main risk factor is genetics. There is something which we call essential hypertension, and the reason we call it essential is we have no understanding of the causative factors. We presume that this is a genetic multifactorial disorder that exists in families. A very small percentage of people will develop hypertension, which we call secondary hypertension, where they have a specific cause. Their blood vessels are abnormal in their kidney. They have an inflammatory disorder of their kidney that raises their blood pressure. They have some injury to the blood vessels or a congenital anomaly of their blood vessels, a disorder of the heart or some endocrine function. Those are readily identifiable and treatable.

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