Blood Pressure in University Freshmen and Office Patients

What is the average blood pressure for a man or woman of a given age?How common is hypertension in young people?What is its significance, particularly in early life?These are some of the ques- tions which occurred to me after taking the blood pressures on 265 men called in the closing days of the second draft.1Although clinical experience had led me to expect a high incidence of hypertension in young men, it had not prepared me for the finding that in this par- ticular series there were more with pressures over 130 mm.than under ; and very many with pressures between 160 and 275.It was soon clear that this group did not represent a fair sampling from the community because so many were rejects from the recruiting offices ; that is, most of the physically fit had gone to war and the unfit were left.On turning to the available statistics, it was surprising to see that most of them must be objected to on this same score of previous selection.Thus Smith 2 studied 500 aviation recruits, Sorapure 3 796 soldiers, Goepp4 9,996 accepted insurance cases, Fisher5 12,647 accepted insurance cases, MacKenzie 6 31,934 accepted insurance cases, and Woley7 1,000 insurance cases which remained after excluding those with histories or physical findings suggestive of cardiovascular abnormality.The insurance statistics would have much more value if they were based on the examination of all applicants; but even then