What are the potential effects of the recommendations on practice?
The emergency symptoms listed in the recommendation may lead to more referrals to hospital. However, people with emergency symptoms will benefit from urgent treatment because accelerated hypertension can be fatal if untreated. There may be some additional resource use from doing target organ damage tests more quickly and re-measuring blood pressure within 7 days. However, the number of people started on treatment immediately may be reduced because of undertaking investigations first.