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Essential Hypertension

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Essential hypertension can often be without symptoms and only discover that their blood pressure is high during a doctor’s appointment. Essential hypertension can begin at any age, however it most often occurs first during the middle-age years. Hypertension is usually asymptomatic until complications develop in affected organs. Common effects of hypertension range from dizziness, flushed facies, headache, fatigue, epistaxis, to nervousness. Severe hypertension, a hypertensive crisis, can cause severe cardiovascular, neurologic, and renal. Aneurysms, abnormal bulges that forms in the wall of an artery, develop. They develop and grow for long periods of time, sometimes years, without any visible signs or symptoms until they either rupture, grow …show more content…

Chronic kidney disease is yet another symptom, however, blood vessels narrow in the kidneys, possibly causing kidney failure if not treated in time. Blood vessels in the eyes burst or bleed leading to drastic eye damage including vision changes or blindness. Plaque builds up in leg arteries and affects blood flow in the legs leading to peripheral artery disease. The most common symptoms are pain, cramping, numbness, aching, or heaviness in the legs, feet, and buttocks after walking or climbing stairs. Stroke, when the flow of oxygen-rich blood to a portion of the brain is blocked, can also occur. Stroke leads to the sudden onset of weakness, paralysis or numbness of the face, arms, or legs, trouble speaking or understanding speech, and trouble seeing. A condition can also develop in which there is a spectrum of retinal (pertaining to the eye) vascular signs in people with elevated blood pressure, hypertensive retinopathy. Retinal circulation undergoes a series of chemical and physical changes in response to the elevated blood …show more content…

When the cuff is fully inflated to a certain maximum pressure, depending on the patient, typically 180 mmHg, no blood flow occurs through the artery. As it is slowly deflated a series of bounding motions can be heard. The first of these numbers will be recorded as the systolic pressure, while the last of these numbers will be recorded as the diastolic pressure. A BP reading, given in mmHg, has two numbers. The upper number, the systolic pressure, measures the pressure in your arteries when your heart beats. The lower number, the diastolic pressure, measures the pressure in your arteries between beats. Some people experience, what is referred to as, “white coat hypertension.” This is a type of hypertension wherein the patient believes the office to be a stressful environment and, as a result, their BP is artificially higher. There are certain prerequisites before getting BP taken: you can neither drink coffee nor smoke cigarettes for half an hour prior, you must use the restroom as bladder volume may influence BP reading, and you must sit for five minutes beforehand. To accurately diagnose someone, the doctor must take separate reading, on different days, at different times. The ABCDE mnemonic can be used to help determine the presence of hypertension: Accuracy of diagnosis, obstructive sleep apnea, aldosteronism, presence of renal artery; Bruits,

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