Hypertension: Mechanisms, Diagnosis and Management

Management of Essential Hypertension,by F. Gilbert McMahon, 468 pp, with illus, $18.50, Mt Kisco, NY, Futura, 1978. Lulled into complacency by the safety, simplicity, and effectiveness of the current "stepped-care" treatment of hypertension for 98% of its victims, physicians have devoted less attention to the substantial scientific inquiry into its mechanisms during the last decade than otherwise would have been given to a disease of this importance. The authors of both books reviewed here estimate that 23 million adult Americans (one in ten) have high blood pressure and consequently have a higher-than-average risk of stroke, heart attack, heart failure, kidney disease, and renal failure. Davis et al have tapped the highly developed perspectives of 33 leading investigators to present the neglected scientific progress of recent years in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, neurovegetative factors, vascular reactivity, intravascular volume interaction, mineralocorticoids, oral contraceptives, prostaglandins, and other renal humoral regulators in the regulation