Slides and written lecture on blood pressure

Go here for a easy to read and follow series of lectures (written with slides) that give a pretty much up to date orthodox view of things. Calcium blockers have been resurrected. ACE inhibitors have had a bit of their hype taken off them. The diuretics once again do the business. Beta blockers didn't get a look in in the ALLHAT trial. If you have hypertension expect to be on two to three drugs to achieve modern guidelines.

High systolic blood pressure in the older folk 60 and over was considered not to be much of a risk factor when I trained. Now they tell us - the absolute benefit of treating a thousand patients for 5 years was the prevention of 29 strokes and 53 major cardiovascular events.

How does this stack up with-:

From the European Heart Journal Issue 20, October 2000.

‘No randomized trial has ever demonstrated any reduction of the risk of either overall or cardiovascular death by reducing systolic blood pressure from our thresholds to below 140mm Hg.’

The more one reads the less certain one becomes!! Would you take treatment given the above stats? I'd like to know.