Better Outlook In High Blood Pressure

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30365, 14 February 1964, Page 3

Better Outlook In High Blood Pressure

There had been important developments in the treatment of high blood pressure by drugs over the last two or three years, and progress seemed to be continuing, Professor Sir Horace Smirk, research professor of medicine at the O'tago. Medical School and director of the Wellcome Research Institute, Dunedin, told a reporter, after addressing a physicians’ meeting yesterday. The meeting was a plenary session of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. Sir Horace Smirk gave a comparison of the outlook for hypertension patients today with their prospects of survival in 1950, before the first satisfactory treatment drug was available. ' Because a wide range of such drugs could now be called on, there was every prospect of a particular patient being treated successfully without major detrimental side-effects, he said. ■ Some hypertension drugs now in wide use had had their first investigation, irt his department, Sir Horace Smirk added. Most were synthesised in the laboratories of overseas pharmaceutical firms. “Hypertensive patients differ very widely indeed as regards their outlook and it is possible by the kind of analysis which we- have worked out in Dunedin .to make a more accurate assessment,” Sir Horace Smirk said. “Some drugs are somewhat more effective than ■ others: but there is a wide choice, and it is not so much a matter of one drug being greatly superior to'another as of there being sufficient differences between patients to make it necessary sometimes to try' several substances before the most suitable one can be found. “Life expectancy in patients

who can be shown to need treatment has been improved appreciably by effective treatment. ‘‘ln general, patients who think they may be suffering from one of the many disorders associated with hypertension should consult their own practitioner, for he is the person who can best determine whether the matter is of a simple kind or requires reference to a consultant or specialised clinic.”