Hypertension is the major cause of cardio-vascular diseases and contributes to 13.5% of premature deaths worldwide. With a 10–year risk to develop organ damages estimated at 30%, severe hypertension exposes even more patients to premature death. Severe hypertension is a type of hypertension with systolic blood pressure ≥ 180mmHg and/or diastolic blood pressure ≥ 110 mmHg that may present with or without symptoms/signs or target organ damages, and may be classified accordingly as asymptomatic (without symptoms/signs) severe hypertension, hypertension urgency (with symptoms/signs, no target organ damage) or hypertension emergency (with target organ damage). Hypertension urgency and hypertension emergency are considered hypertension crisis.
This study aimed to establish the socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of the patients who presented with severe hypertension at the Emergency Departments of two private hospitals of the Netcare Management (Pty) Limited in Johannesburg during the period from the 1st of January 2010 to 30th April 2011. These patients presumably receive quality health care and may not be expected to develop severe hypertension. Therefore, this study would contribute to efforts to identify patients at risk and those who may benefit from preventive measures.
The methodology of this study was a retrospective, transversal and comparative study. One thousand and forty-two patients were included in the study. All of these participants had a medical aid cover or were able to pay for medical consultation at a private hospital. Data were collected from an electronic database, the Medibank™, and from manual patients’ registers kept in each hospital’s Emergency Department.
Severe hypertension was found among 1.7% of all patients who presented to the studied emergency departments. Only 817 patients were classified in the different subtypes of SH. Asymptomatic severe hypertension was the most common (83.4%) type of severe hypertension and hypertension emergency was the least common (4.8%). At Mulbarton Hospital, 50.2% of severe hypertension patients were male and at Linksfield Hospital, 60.3% were female. Male patients were younger than female patients. White patients and elderly were mostly affected by severe hypertension in the studied population.
Systolic blood pressures were similar among the different races and genders. Black patients had higher diastolic blood pressure compared to white patients. White patients were older and may have had a tendency of isolated systolic hypertension.
Overall, the most common symptoms/signs in hypertension urgency were chest pains (46.4%), headache (34.0%) and epistaxis (11.3%). The most common target organ damages in hypertension emergency were stroke (58.9%), left ventricular failure/congestive cardiac failure (28.2%) and seizures (12.8%). None of the studied characteristics could be claimed predictors of hypertension crisis. Also, there was no association between seasons and days of presentation and onset of severe hypertension in each hospitals.
Further studies are required to include other factors that are known to affect the occurrence of severe hypertension, such as co-morbidities, smoking, alcohol intake and poor adherence to medication by known hypertensive patients. Also, risk factors contributing to the occurrence of SH among younger black patients need to be analysed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/14378 |
| Date | 28 March 2014 |
| Creators | Kabongo, Diulu |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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