Can High Blood Pressure Protect You?

Can High Blood Pressure Protect You?

A surprising report from Northwestern University indicates that high blood pressure may actually PROTECT congestive heart failure (CHF) patients from death associated with their disease.

Between March 2003 and December 2004, researchers examined medical records of more than 48,000 heart failure patients who were admitted to the hospital. Nearly 5,800 of these patients were monitored for an additional 60 to 90 days after their release from the hospital.

About half of the patients had systolic blood pressure (SBP) of 140 or higher at admission. The collected data showed that lower SBP was clearly associated with higher death rate in hospital. For instance, 7.2 percent of patients with SBP lower than 120 died in hospital, compared to 1.7 percent of patients with SBP higher than 161.

Similar results were recorded for the patients who were followed after their release. Fourteen percent with the lowest SBP died, while only 5.4 percent with the highest SBP passed away during the observation period.

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the authors suggest that SBP can be considered an independent indicator to help judge prognosis for heart failure patients when admitted to hospital.