How high can BP go before you die?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, Monday I woke up feeling dizzy, and ignored it. Tuesday came and I still felt dizzy/seasick (I was in the Navy for 7 years and never got seasick though, so it’s just a guess as to what seasickness might feel like. Sort of like walking and expecting the earth to be under your foot, only it moved deeper just before your foot hit ground or something. Or like when you think you have one more stair to go down, and end up jamming your leg, but much more subtle).

Anyway, last time I felt like this I happened to have a Dr’s Appt that day, and they took my BP and freaked. I don’t remember what it was, but it scared them.

So, remembering this, I decide to go to the ER Tuesday afternoon.

190/145, ± 5 on either side, I don’t remember exactly.

The nurse freaked, and very quickly escorted me to a room, and I was very quickly connected to an EKG, and I had 4 nurses who would pop their heads in about every 3 minutes, and they gave me a BP pill very quickly, and things proceeded very quickly in general until my BP went down to around 145/80.

Quickest service I ever got in an ER, by far.

So they take some blood and piss, and it’s all OK and EKG is also OK, and I have to go follow up with the family doc in the morning; and I’m taking some sort of pill every day as well.

I’m otherwise healthy, but 40-50 lbs overweight, and getting older (I’m 40), so I figure it’s time to go for that long delayed gym membership and diet change deal about now.

So, was I in serious danger of popping off to see the big daddy in the sky, or can this not really be answered because of all the other variables (age, genes, etc)?

2

A few years back, I wasn’t feeling well and went to the ER (I was out of town at the time, so I couldn’t see my own Dr) and I recall the lower number was 106 and they had a fit. They gave me meds and told me to see my own Dr ASAP upon getting home. I’ve been on BP meds ever since.

I’m not a medical professional, but yours sounded WAAAAAAY too high.

3

Here’s a neat, quicky reference. You were: "Stage 2 hypertension: 160 and above/100 and above " Not good.

4

Thanks Mom!

5

BP’s’s up from about 57 to 65 in the past 3 months. If it hits 130 on the NYSE before the end of FY05, it won’t kill me in a physiological sense.

6

I had a client a few years back who ran a large waterproofing/brick supply yard in Bed Sty Brooklyn. He was over his ideal weight by the same number of pounds, had a short temper, ate all the wrong crap and was in a constant state of nervous aggression. His wife got him a one-week spa excursion in AZ for his 40th birthday and he came back a new man. The reason I mention him was because of what he relayed to me upon his return. He said the spa staff taught him that your body is not only a temple - but quite similar to a car: You can beat the hell out of until the warranty runs out, and the age of 40 is the point in a person’s life where your manufacturer’s warranty expires.

7

Google “malignant hypertension”. One article says…

… Hypertensive urgency must be distinguished from emergency. Urgency is defined as severely elevated blood pressure (ie, systolic >220 mm Hg or diastolic >120 mm Hg) with no evidence of target organ damage.

Hypertensive emergencies require immediate therapy to decrease blood pressure within minutes to hours. In contrast, no evidence suggests a benefit from rapidly reducing blood pressure in patients with hypertensive urgency. In fact, such aggressive therapy may harm the patient, resulting in cardiac, renal, or cerebral hypoperfusion. This article discusses hypertensive emergency, but therapy for hypertensive urgency is discussed briefly. …

8

Different people will have different limits for how high their BP can go before it kills them.

For example, if you have a weakened artery in your brain, it might blow and kill you at a BP of 160/100, whereas someone like my father, who has both hypertension and “whitecoat hypertension”, meaning his BP shoots up even higher when someone measures it, has had recorded BPs of 210/140 and is quite healthy (but on medication).

Medical professionals aim to keep it under 135/90, but there is a rule of thirds.
1/3 of hypertensives are diagnosed.
1/3 of diagnosed hypertensives are on medication (either it’s not prescribed or they don’t take it).
1/3 of medicated, diagnosed hypertensives have adequately controlled BP.

9

I wouldn’t mind seeing cites for this. I have a hard time believing that treatments are only successful 33% of the time, and that only 33% of those who know to have hypertension take the medicine that they know they need.

Just seems a little off.

10

How could anyone KNOW they have “whitecoat hypertension”?

Seriously.

11

At a guess, I’d say that’s because it isn’t that high when measured at home or otherwise by a non-medical person. And it can be done–you don’t have to have a nursing degree to take a blood pressure.

12

I am assuming (yes I know) that “whitecoat hypertension”, is what happens to your blood pressure when you go see a doctor. It’s a fear of doctors, although the word “fear” may be to strong of a definition.

When I take my blood pressure at home, it is in a fairly normal range and is controlled by medication. When I go into my doctor every 4 months to have it checked, it is off the charts, even on medication. It doesn’t matter if the nurse checks it or the doctor.

I took my BP monitor to the doctor’s office so we could check to make sure it was accurate. It is.

So going to the doctor’s office stresses me out enough that my blood pressure goes through the roof. I keep a daily log of my blood pressure, so he can make sure the medications are doing their job because he can’t tell by the office readings.

13

My mother is a doctor, every time she takes his BP at home it’s much lower (although still too high) than the reading at the doctors office later that day. He’s had a 24 hour monitor reading that confirms that my mother’s readings are the correct ones. Happy?

I got the rule of thirds thing from one of the cardivascular guys here. Seriously, you’d be REALLY surprised how many people go on little “drug holidays” and “forget” to take their medication. Especially for something like hypertension where the person feels ok, and the meds have side effects. It’s taken my dad trying 3 different combinations of 3 different kinds of drugs to get his blood pressure to 140/95- which is better than it was, but wouldn’t fall under “adequately controlled”, for which it has to be 130/85 or less.

14

Snarky?

15

I have seen what is thought to be the record blood pressure in my department–300/240. (The systolic was probably somewhat over 300; that was as high as the cuff went.) He didn’t make it. The lesson, boys and girls? Don’t stop your clonidine and start smoking crack at the same time.

The difference between “urgency” and “emergency” is symptoms. A completely asymptomatic patient with a BP of 220/140 has “urgency”, but if he develops blurry vision, headache, etc., it becomes an “emergency”.

I doubt that the rule of thirds is that far off, as much as I’d like to think a third of the hypertensives in my clinic are under control.

16

Sorry, you ask, I answer, more use of smilies next time. :slight_smile:

17

I have a touch of the whitecoat BP problem, I think.

That, and the fact I’d recently taken Sudafed at the time, alarmed the nice medical person I saw when I went in to be examined for what turned out to be a sinus infection.

I was a little alarmed, because they wouldn’t tell me what the BP was at first, and had a second person come in to try and take it a couple more times.

It was 150/120. I explained about the Sudafed - and that seemed to mollify them, and they had me come in two weeks later to be checked again. 120/90.

18

About a year ago I went through a serious post-partum anxiety disorder during which my BP was out of control. Racing heart, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t eat or sleep, whole nine yards. Within about a week the Paxil brought me back to normal and my BP was fine.

I’ve figured that if I didn’t have a stroke then, I’m probably okay for at least 10 years. Any truth to my theory?

19

Holy crap!

We have infusion pumps here that have the occlusion limit set to 300 mmHg. I fine it oddly amusing that his blood pressure was so high, that he might not have been able to receive intravenous drugs. Although with a bP that high, you wouldn’t really want to introduce more fluids into his bloodstream.

20

Holy Crap is exactly what I was going to say!