Medical Evaluation of the Surgical Treatment of Hypertension

Common sense and clinical and scientific hypothesis as well hold that the unfavorable progress and end of patients with hypertension is related to the height of the blood pressure. Not the only test but an important test of any therapeutic procedure in continued arterial hypertension is the effect on the level of the blood pressure. Since it has been observed that most patients with essential hypertension have well defined spontaneous lowering of the blood pressure and that a considerable number have normal blood pressure levels transiently (23 per cent of early benign cases, 11 per cent of moderate cases, 8 per cent, of advanced cases and even 8 per cent of malignant cases), the duration of the hypotensive effect and a fall to normal or near normal are important criteria for critical evaluation. As a medical observer I have been intimately associated with the surgical treatment of hypertension first for