Older adults are more likely than younger people to havehigh blood pressureand suffer from serious health conditions that can be caused or worsened by hypertension, such as heart disease and stroke.
But research suggests that high blood pressure in older patients often isnt being treated as aggressively as it should be.
AHarvard studyfound that more than 70 percent of older Americans who need more intensivetreatment for high blood pressurearent receiving it, and some health experts say they think age bias could play a role in those decisions.
The assumption by doctors that high blood pressure is inevitable after a certain age, and concerns about side effects of lower blood pressures on older people, could be factors in this undertreatment.
Theres a bias towards older people because doctors are concerned that they wont do well on these lower blood pressures, says Beverly Green, M.D., senior investigator for Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute.
Doctors may have concerns about older patients becoming lightheaded, which could increase fall risk, and the effect on cognitive abilities, especially for someone already experiencing cognitive decline.
But many of these concerns have been challenged by research, Green says, and its older people who actually benefit the most from the lower blood pressures.
Older people may not receive enough blood pressure medication
Hypertension becomes more common with age: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says 74.5 percent of those over age 60 have high blood pressure, which is defined as a reading of 130/80 mm Hg.
Yet a studypublished inHypertensionfound that physicians were treating high blood pressure less aggressively in recent years, with fewer medications being prescribed overall.
Lead author Brent Egan, M.D., vice president of the American Medical Associations cardiovascular disease prevention group, says a fall in blood pressure diagnosis and treatment from 2015 to 2018 was primarily explained by a decline in the effectiveness of hypertension management plans.
Fewer patients were being diagnosed with hypertension, fewer were being treated, and those being treated were more likely to report taking a single blood pressure medication when most patients require two or more blood pressure medications to control their hypertension, Egan says.
