THE CURIOUS CASE OF HYPERTENSION

I woke up the other day to the major newspapers breaking the results of a new study that showed more intensive blood pressure treatment to less than 120 systolic reduced the rate of heart heart attacks by 30 per cent and mortality by 25 percent. I was a little peeved that i had to read the information in the paper, before the entire study was published and secondly because of the barrage of phone calls that the articles would generate.

          If you are planning to call your doctor,let me save you a call.The detailed study results will only be released in a few months. So no new recommendations will be made till we dissect the study  and the price the patients paid with regard to side effects to achieve  this new goal.While we are talking about medical information in the papers,I will let you in on little secret in the medical data world.The risk reduction that you read about is what we call relative risk reduction. say a group receiving a treatment has a rate of heart attacks of 20 per cent. you would assume that the risk reduction is 4 per cent. That is the absolute risk and not what is reported. The relative risk in this case is 20 per cent and that is what is reported in the media.The relative risk in a rough calculation is 16/20, which is 0.8, the remaining.20 translates into the relative risk reduction..