Neurogenic mechanisms are important in the maintenance of most forms of hypertension, yet the brain is highly vulnerable to the deleterious effects of elevated blood pressure. Hypertensive encephalopathy results from a sudden, sustained rise in blood pressure sufficient to exceed the upper limit of cerebral blood flow autoregulation. The cerebral circulation adapts to chronic less severe hypertension but at the expense of changes that predispose to stroke due to arterial occlusion or rupture. Stroke is a generic term for a clinical syndrome that includes focal infarction or hemorrhage in the brain, or subarachnoid hemorrhage. Atherothromboembolism and thrombotic occlusion of lipohyalinotic small-diameter end arteries are the principal causes of cerebral infarction. Microaneurysm rupture is the usual cause of hypertension-associated intracerebral hemorrhage. Rupture of aneurysms on the circle of Willis is the most common cause of nontraumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage. Stroke is a major cause of morbidity and mortality, particularly among persons aged 65 years or older. Treatment of diastolic hypertension reduces the incidence of stroke by about 40%. Treatment of isolated systolic hypertension in persons aged 60 years and older reduces the incidence of stroke by more than one third. Blood pressure management in the setting of acute stroke and the role of antihypertensive therapy in the prevention of multi-infarct dementia require further study.
(Arch Intern Med. 1992;152:938-945)
Register and get free email Table of Contents alerts, saved searches, PowerPoint downloads, CME quizzes, and more
Subscribe for full-text access to content from 1998 forward and a host of useful features
Activate your current subscription (AMA members and current subscribers)
Purchase Online Access to this article for 24 hours
Country-Specific Mortality and Growth Failure in Infancy and Yound Children and Association With Material Stature
Use interactive graphics and maps to view and sort country-specific infant and early dhildhood mortality and growth failure data and their association with maternal
Instructions
Thank you for submitting a comment on this article. It will be reviewed by JAMA Internal Medicine editors. You will be notified when your comment has been published. Comments should not exceed 500 words of text and 10 references.
Do not submit personal medical questions or information that could identify a specific patient, questions about a particular case, or general inquiries to an author. Only content that has not been published, posted, or submitted elsewhere should be submitted. By submitting this Comment, you and any coauthors transfer copyright to the journal if your Comment is posted.
* = Required Field
Disclosure of Any Conflicts of Interest* Indicate all relevant conflicts of interest of each author below, including all relevant financial interests, activities, and relationships within the past 3 years including, but not limited to, employment, affiliation, grants or funding, consultancies, honoraria or payment, speakers’ bureaus, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, royalties, donation of medical equipment, or patents planned, pending, or issued. If all authors have none, check "No potential conflicts or relevant financial interests" in the box below. Please also indicate any funding received in support of this work. The information will be posted with your response.
Some tools below are only available to our subscribers or users with an online account.
Download citation file:
Web of Science® Times Cited: 75
Customize your page view by dragging & repositioning the boxes below.
More Listings atJAMACareerCenter.com >
and access these and other features:
Register Now
Enter your username and email address. We'll send you a link to reset your password.
Enter your username and email address. We'll send instructions on how to reset your password to the email address we have on record.
Need assistance?
Athens and Shibboleth are access management services that provide single sign-on to protected resources. They replace the multiple user names and passwords necessary to access subscription-based content with a single user name and password that can be entered once per session. It operates independently of a user's location or IP address. If your institution uses Athens or Shibboleth authentication, please contact your site administrator to receive your user name and password.