Hypertension in older patients, a retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: It is unknown to what extent General Practitioners (GPs) manage hypertension (HT) differently in older patients, as compared to younger age groups. The purpose of our study was to compare HT management in older patients to younger age groups.

METHODS: We performed a retrospective cohort study of patients of 159 GP's practices in the Integrated Primary Care Information (IPCI) database. The study period lasted from September 2010 through December 2012. The study population consisted of all patients aged 60 years or older with at least one blood pressure (BP) measurement during the inclusion period, without pre-existent HT, diabetes mellitus (DM) or atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease at time of study start. Study outcomes were a diagnosis of HT within one month after cohort entry and the use of antihypertensive medication within 4 months after cohort entry in HT diagnosed patients. We compared the incidence of outcomes between the age groups, stratified by systolic blood pressure (SBP). Logistic regression analysis was used to assess the influence of age-adjusted SBP Z-scores, age and gender on the outcomes.

RESULTS: We included 19,500 patients from 159 GP's practices of whom 1,181 (6.1 %) were newly diagnosed with HT. Corrected for age-adjusted SBP, older patients were less likely to be diagnosed with HT (odds ratio per year age increase 0.98, p < 0.001). Corrected for age-adjusted SBP, no significant effect of age on the probability of treatment in newly diagnosed HT patients was observed (p = 0.82).

CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that GPs are less inclined to diagnose HT with increasing patient age, but do not withhold treatment when they diagnose HT in older patients.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2016

Erschienen:

2016

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:16

Enthalten in:

BMC geriatrics - 16(2016) vom: 19. Juli, Seite 142

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Blok, C G H [VerfasserIn]
de Ridder, M A J [VerfasserIn]
Verhamme, K M C [VerfasserIn]
Moorman, P W [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Age factors
Aged 80 and over
Antihypertensive Agents
Comparative Study
Electronic health records
General practice
Hypertension
Journal Article

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 09.06.2017

Date Revised 02.12.2018

published: Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1186/s12877-016-0316-0

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM262601389