HIGH blood pressure is Australia’s number-one death risk factor – contributing to 28,500 deaths every year.

However, doctors do not yet recommend this practice to their patients since these results have not yet been published and are in the preliminary stage as of now. But if the full results pan out, they eventually could influence treatment guidelines.

Groups such as the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology will likely consider the trial results when deciding whether to revise their guidelines, said cardiologist Cam Patterson, chief operating officer at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “It will serve as a road map and will save a significant amount of lives”.

It focused on a more aggressive target for systolic blood pressure, the upper blood pressure reading.

This approach has been created to stop the rising blood pressure in their tracks, especially for the elderly people. Elder patients that present elevated blood pressure at particularly targeted by the findings of the new research.

Right now, people are told to get their blood pressure to 140 or lower. The other half was treated more aggressively to reach a target of 120. It reduced the deaths from any cause by 25 percent. Their rates of cardiovascular problems dropped by nearly 30 percent. “That would be premature”, cautioned Dr. Suzanne Oparil of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, one of the study investigators.

The goal of the study, known as the Sprint study, was to determine what goal levels should be for people with high blood pressure.

GARY GIBBONS: This is the commonly recommended target of systolic blood pressure of 140.

The average of age of participants is 68, and a quarter of them are over 75.

Researchers will continue to track the participants to see if kidney disease, cognitive function and dementia also were affected by more aggressive care.

Meanwhile, what’s the advice for patients now struggling to control their blood pressure? “But studies such as this really reinforce that we need to take important steps to raise public awareness to make sure that [patients] are having conversations with their health care providers about how it can be effectively managed”.

Systolic blood pressure is a measure of the pressure in the arteries when the heart muscle contracts. For years, cardiologists have wondered how low blood pressure should go. Is it possible that not all patients are fit for lower targets and that these could push more dizziness, falls and other complications? According to NIH, it is estimated that one in three people in the country has high blood pressure.