(HealthDay News) — From 2002 to 2014, hypertensive crisis hospitalizations increased steadily, but the odds of death during hypertensive crisis hospitalizations decreased, according to a study published online Jan. 27 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Joseph E. Ebinger, M.D., from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and colleagues estimated the sex-pooled and sex-specific temporal trends in hypertensive crisis hospitalization and case fatality rates during 2002 to 2006, 2007 to 2011, and 2012 to 2014 using data from the National Inpatient Sample.
The researchers identified an estimated 918,392 hypertensive crisis hospitalizations and 4,377 in-hospital deaths during 2002 to 2014. During the entire period, hypertensive crisis accounted for 0.23% of all hospitalizations, including 0.24 and 0.22% for men and women, respectively. The odds of experiencing a hospitalization primarily for hypertensive crisis increased annually for both men and women in multivariable analyses adjusting for age, race or ethnicity, and cardiovascular conditions (odds ratio, 1.083 and 1.07 per year, respectively), with the rate of increase significantly higher for men. After multivariable adjustment, the odds of death during hypertensive crisis hospitalization decreased annually for men and women (odds ratios, 0.89 and 0.92 per year, respectively).
“Although associated case fatality rates are decreasing, the rising tide of admissions for the most extreme clinical manifestations of uncontrolled blood pressure — occurring despite contemporaneous improvements in hypertension prevention and control nationwide — warrant further investigation,” the authors write.
