Does lowering of blood pressure improve survival in patients with malignant hypertension complicated by renal insufficiency?
The study investigates the impact of blood pressure lowering on survival in patients with malignant hypertension and renal insufficiency.
BEFORE the introduction of hypotensive drugs malignant hypertension uniformly resulted in early death. In 2 large series 79 per cent and 90 per cent of patients died in the first year after diagnosis.1 , 2 In contrast, a one-year survival rate of 85 per cent and a twelve-year survival rate of 38 per cent were recently reported in treated nonazotemic patients.3 There is general agreement that the main factor influencing length of survival is the state of renal function at the time of diagnosis. When this study was begun, the results from most published experience suggested that lowering of blood pressure in . . .
Woods et al. (Thu,) studied this question.