Abstract
Since 75% of all hypertensive persons have mild or moderate elevation of blood pressure, and since available data provide, at best, inconsistent guidance for therapy, it is not surprising that intense interest continues to raise the questions: who should be treated, at what time, and by what means. Often the issue is joined by the straightforward question, “At what level of blood pressure should treatment be instituted?” Unfortunately, however, available knowledge about the nature of high blood pressure suggests that the question is as yet unanswerable (1). The results of epidemiologic and intervention studies reveal a clinical heterogeneity so complex as to defy discrimination of those to be, and those not to be, treated by any device as simple as a single and highly variable physical measure (2).
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© 1981 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
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Alderman, M.H. (1981). Position Paper: The Variation in Risk Among Hypertensive Patients: Is Broad Scale Therapy to Help Only a Few Justifiable? What Pressure Levels Should Be Treated. In: Laragh, J.H., Bühler, F.R., Seldin, D.W. (eds) Frontiers in Hypertension Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5899-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5899-5_2
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