Evaluation of Visual Evoked Potential among Hypertensive and Normotensive Individuals

This cross-sectional study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital after receiving approval from the Institutional Ethics Committee EC/NEW/INST/2020/1249.Forty normotensive and 40 hypertensive participants between the ages of 40 and 70 years were included in this study.By the convenient sampling method, normotensive participants were recruited from the hospital after measuring blood pressure.Hypertensive patients were recruited from the medicine outpatient department (OPD) with no other comorbidities. Inclusion CriteriaHypertensive patients from the Medicine OPD between the ages of 40 and 70 years who provided informed consent. introductionHypertension (HTN) is often referred to as a "silent killer" because it may remain asymptomatic for prolonged periods while leading to life-threatening complications.Globally, an estimated 7.5 million deaths, accounting for 12.8% of all deaths, are attributed to HTN.It is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease and stroke.Other complications include peripheral vascular disease, nephropathy, and retinopathy.1 Hypertensive retinopathy is characterized by a spectrum of retinal vascular changes associated with elevated blood pressure.2 HTN-induced vascular endothelial alterations, such as hyalinization, may cause demyelination of sensory tracts transmitting visual impulses to higher centers, resulting in abnormal neural conduction.3 Additionally, HTN-related ischemia can lead to optic nerve demyelination or retinal ganglion cell injury even before the clinical manifestation of hypertensive retinopathy.The application of evoked potentials (EPs) emerged in the 1970s when Halliday demonstrated that visual evoked potentials (VEPs) could reveal significant optic tract lesions in patients with optic neuritis.VEPs were chosen because they offer an objective and noninvasive assessment of visual pathway integrity and are sensitive to early demyelinating and ischemic changes caused by HTN, even before clinical retinopathy develops.The aim of this study was to record and analyze VEPs in patients with primary HTN and compare the findings with those of normotensive subjects.Primary hypertensive patients exhibit significant prolongation of VEP latencies compared with normotensive individuals, reflecting early subclinical involvement of the visual pathway.