A selection of resources

Hypertensive emergencies

asymptomatic

usually doesn't need treatment

The magic number

180/120

Which drugs to use?

Hypertension

The guidelines

For true hypertensive emergencies the european society of cardiology(recommendation 8.3) has had handy table on the onset and duration of the intravenous medications. However, if there is no signs of end-organ damage they do not recommend inpatient treatment but urgent outpatient review.

NICE guidelines recommend same day treatment only if "new onset confusion, chest pain, signs of heart failure, or acute kidney injury" or if signs of end organ damage (recommend ecg, u/e, urine dip and fundoscopy." However still only recommends oral treatment in these patients.


Disease

The FOAM Resoucres

The breach

Summary of two papers on asymptomatic hypertension in the emergency department 

The breach

Summary of good paper looking at postural drop in the ED and why it is probably not that useful

Disease

Some useful papers

Whilst there seems no decent randomised controlled trials on asymptomatic hypertension there is a few studies on when/ how much to lower blood pressure in the various true hypertensive emergencies.