Non-invasive haemodynamic assessments among hypertensive patients in a routine family doctor's office.

Introduction And Objective: Difficult-to-control blood pressure can be attributed to a mismatch between the haemodynamic type of hypertension and the drug class used in treatment. Impedance cardiography may be a useful tool for enabling the individualization of antihypertensive therapy. The aim was to investigate the distribution of haemodynamic types of HT among hypertensive patients in an outpatient clinic.

Material And Methods: This was a prospective, observational study of patients with primary hypertension at an outpatient clinic. A 10-minute ICG examination was performed in 189 consecutive, patients (118 men and 71 women). Patients were divided into groups based on whether their hypertension was well-controlled (140/90 mmHg, n=95). They were also stratified according to haemodynamic states.

Results: Patients with poorly controlled blood pressure compared to patients with well controlled blood pressure had a high haemodynamic output in 6.3% vs. 2.1% (p=0.153), and high vascular resistance in 41.1% vs. 27.7% (p=0.037), and balanced haemodynamic states in 52.6% vs. 70.2% (0 80 beats/min) and fluid retention (p<0.01).

Conclusions: Half of the examined patients did not achieve the therapeutic goals for hypertension treatment. Differences in haemodynamic state of well and poor controlled hypertension groups suggests the usefulness of impedance cardiography-targeted hypertension treatment.