Feb. 3, 2008 High blood pressure may be one of the top killers
in the country, but you'd never know it by the way we're
behaving, say scientists attending the annual congress of the
Society for Critical Care Medicine (SCCM). "Research shows that
some 73 million people in the U.S. have high blood pressure, yet
many of them don't even know it. And among those that do, a
large number are not taking the medications they need to control
it," says Dr. Christopher Granger, a cardiologist at Duke
University Medical Center. "We've discovered that these patients
are getting highly variable treatment. Moreover, we also found
out that we aren't doing a very good job following up with these
folks once they leave the hospital," he adds. Granger and
colleagues at nearly two dozen institutions around the country
created a special registry to find out what happens to patients
with acute, severe hypertension -- those with blood pressure
readings above 160/110 -- when they come to an emergency
department or critical care settin