In 1978, the National High Blood Pressure Coordinating Committee established a new Joint National Committee on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure to review, revise, and augment earlier recommendations of Task Force I and the 1975-1976 Joint National Committee.1,2The following report of the new Joint National Committee presents consensus recommendations of representatives of professional organizations interested in hypertension for health care providers to use in detecting, referring, evaluating, and treating persons with high blood pressure (BP). In addition, this revision addresses the following points: management of mild hypertension, therapeutic guidelines for treating elderly hypertensive persons, patient education for therapy maintenance, the role of nondrug therapies in high BP treatment, new drugs for use in stepped-care therapy, and management of hypertension in special groups. The recommendations are effective for the management of most patients with essential hypertension; patients with unusual problems may require different approaches. Moreover, the
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