Blood pressure checks for young children

Press, 29 August 1977, Page 12

Blood pressure checks for young children

PA Wellington Babies and school children as well as adults should have blood pressure checks, a visiting United States authority on hypertension said.

Dr Frank A. Finnerty, Professor of Medicine at George Washington University Medical Centre and Director of. the Washington Hypertension Clinic, sand all medical facilities should test the blood pressure of all patients as a matter of course.

Dr Finnerty said paediatricians in the United States were now often checking for hypertension in infants. I Although only about one per cent of babies had hypertension the routine was ■ worth while because the disease was often curable in 'the very young.

He said blood-pressure testing should also be carried out by school nurses. It would be more use than measuring weight and

height. The only reason why weight and height measurements were being taken was that these used to be considered indicators of health.

“Twenty years ago everybody thought the fat red faced children were the healthy ones but that’s all gone by the board,” said Dr Finnerty. Among those under 15 with hypertension about 60 per cent could be cured.

Dr Finnerty, who has been touring New Zealand lecturing to doctors, nurses and chemists, said treatment of high blood pressure was often neglected by doctors. “Physicians just aren’t tuned into practising preventive medicine. Most are more interested in taking away pain, and fixing cuts than treating hypertension which is now an acute asymptomatic disease.” Dr Finnerty said hypertension was the single most common cause of strokes and heart disease, and was also a major cause of kidney failure.