9 in 10 Blacks With High Blood Pressure Have Early Heart Disease
Latest Heart News In the study, published online May 31 in the
Annals of Emergency Medicine, researchers looked at 161 people
who came to a single emergency department. More than 93 percent
of the patients were black. None had symptoms or a history of
heart disease but 94 percent had a history of high blood
pressure, or "hypertension." Echocardiograms (an image of the
heart) revealed that nearly 91 percent of the patients had the
beginnings of heart disease despite the lack of symptoms. Most
of the patients with heart disease had diastolic dysfunction,
which means that the heart had a reduced ability to pump blood
to the body, brain and lungs. "These results present a
tremendous opportunity to screen for heart disease before it
becomes symptomatic, especially in a population with high rates
of hypertension," lead author Dr. Phillip Levy, of the
department of emergency medicine at Wayne State University in
Detroit, said in a journal news release.