Digitalis is one of the oldest medicines in the cardiovascular arsenal. When William Withering identified digitalis as the active ingredient in the foxglove plant more than 200 years ago he was only codifying a longstanding folk remedy for heart failure, or “dropsy” as it was known then. Digitalis fully entered the modern era with the…
Kaiser Program Yields Big Improvements In Hypertension Control
August 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment
A large percentage of the 65 million people with high blood pressure in the United States do not know they have hypertension or have not succeeded in controlling their hypertension. Although many programs have been proposed, there is little evidence that any method can produce long term improvement in hypertension control. In a paper published in JAMA,…
Take Your Blood Pressure Pills Or Increase Your Risk Of Stroke
July 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment
A large new observational study demonstrates that people who don’t take their antihypertensive medications are much more likely to have a stroke. The new study, published in the European Heart Journal, used nationwide prescription, hospital and mortality records from 73,527 hypertensive patients in Finland. The Finnish investigators compared 26,704 patients who were hospitalized or died of stroke…
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