I’m a little freaked out right now.
My son is 25. He is skinny. He doesn’t drink or smoke.
His mom bought a blood pressure device the other day (for herself). She decided to take my son’s BP. And was shocked to discover it was dangerously high.
When she called the doctor to make an appointment for him, the nurse basically said yeah he needs to go to the hospital.
So he’s going in the morning…
Any guesses to what this might be?
Thanks for any input.
My first thought is that, if the nurse says you need to go the hospital, they generally mean “right now.” My second thought is that it’s possible for those machines mess up, so going to the ER to get it checked might result in it being found to be a false alarm.
It seems odd to me to be “dangerously high” and not know it at all. There are signs when it gets to the level where you need to be seen right away–at least, in my personal experience. So, again, I’d want to be sure.
Dangerously high but they’re waiting till tomorrow? That’s unsettling.
(I turned up in my Drs office once with dangerously high BP and was sent directly to emerg. (Hypertension Urgency, 4 days on the cardiac ward, 5 wks recovering on my couch!)
Hoping things go smoothly, sending best wishes for speedy resolution.
Maybe - my husband found out he had high blood pressure when he went to donate blood and they wanted to call an ambulance. If he had any symptoms ( and I don’t think he noticed any) he would not have attributed them to the high blood pressure he didn’t know he had.
@Grrr If the nurse said he needs to go to the hospital, she didn’t mean to wait until morning. It might be a problem with the machine or she may have done something wrong- but I’d at least go to an urgent care, if not the ER
I’m sorry guys.
I meant my son is going to the doctor’s office first thing in the morning. If they don’t like what they see, he will then go to the hospital.
Goodness, that’s unsettling! I hope all is ok.
If it’s ok to ask, what was his blood pressure reading?
I just remember his mother telling me the bottom reading was 120?
It’s possible that the home device is poorly calibrated or your wife didn’t use it correctly. This might be a false alarm. But at the same time, even an apparently healthy 25-year-old ought to see a doctor regularly to get baseline numbers.
This happened to me a few months ago. My BP has slowly been increasing over the years, and when my doctor decided it was time to try medication he also recommended getting a home monitor. I was shocked when I got it and it read 200/140, since the highest I’d ever seen before was 130/92. I decided it was pretty unlikely my BP had jumped 50+ points in the past 48 hours, so I brought the monitor to my doctor’s office the next day. It was definitely way off. So OP, hopefully that’s the issue with your son - definitely remember to bring the monitor with you to the doctor’s.
make sure your son has the proper sitting posture (feet flat on the floor), be at rest for a few minutes, breath evenly, etc. And what muldoonthief said, take the monitor with you to the doctor and bench mark the home device vs the real medical device.
best of luck
Also ask the medical professional to watch you use the device, so you can learn if you’re doing so correctly.
Good stuff guys. Thanks.
And I’ll be sure she takes the monitor with her.
Update: Turns out his BP is normal.
The BP device his mom got is crap apparently. She plans to buy another one.
Thanks for everyone’s input. It was really appreciated. I was absolutely terrified last night.
It’s not odd at all, but we don’t need medical misinformation repeated here.
It’s called Severe Asymptomatic Hypertension. You seem to have managed to miss out on the prominent public health advertising that called it (rightly) “the silent killer”. There are those whose first sign of severe hypertension is an acute event, such as a stroke.
Great news. Was the monitor an Omron by any chance? That was the one that I had.
With mine, my wife also tried it. Her BP is always a completely normal 110/70 and that’s what the monitor read for her as well. So I don’t know if it was badly calibrated for high BPs, or if it was a difference in our arm sizes, or what. She’s a physician, so I’m certain we were both using the monitor correctly.
Glad to hear it. I’ve had dangerously high blood pressure that luckily diminished to normal rapidly with medication.
Getting accurate readings is difficult. Besides devices being inaccurate or inconsistent not everybody maintains steady blood pressure. Doctors tell me many of their patients display significantly higher blood pressure during visits, even if they bring their device in with them. And mentioned above is the recommendation o sit still with both feet on the floor for 10 minutes before taking a reading. I’ve noticed this is largely ignored.
Yeah, even medical professionals don’t measure blood pressure correctly a shocking amount of the time.
As above, feet flat on the floor, with appropriately sized cuff, on a calibrated device, siting still for at least 5 minutes, etc. Also, don’t measure over clothes, as this will bump up the numbers. Try both arms initially and in the future measure on the arm with the higher reading. I’ve personally had readings shift 30-50% over a few minutes in a doctors office just from some of these.
Saw this this morning but didn’t have time to comment then. @Grrr , glad to hear it all worked out well. It’s sort of amazing when you stop to think about it, the ubiquitousness of technology, and how robust and reliable it is, that allows a lay-person to do today, things that not that long ago wouldn’t have been possible.
Some years ago I was dating a diabetic. One day she went to do her first blood sugar test of the day and that was when her tester went bad. I can’t remember the numbers now, but she spent the night at the hospital just in case.
Medical technology can be both wonderful and terrifying at the same time.
Typical routine for my PCP visits: a nurse shows me into a room, weighs me and uses an automated machine to take my blood pressure. No waiting or anything. Then I am shown to a consulting room, after a few minutes of quiet waiting, my doctor comes in and looks at the BP number and says “that’s kind of high, let’s try again.” Then he takes it with a manual meter and says “that’s better, 130/70” or something similar. I wonder if that nurse ever wonders why she deals with so many patients with high BP.
This is me. I’ve been seeing a cardiologist for about 3 years for my high blood pressure. Every time I go, the initial reading is very high. They now know to take it at least a couple more times before it returns to normal. It’s called White Coat Syndrome.
What Is White Coat Syndrome? (clevelandclinic.org)
When I go for an appointment, I sit very still and quiet in the waiting room, taking calming breaths (even though I don’t feel anxious). It doesn’t make any difference. It happens every time.