emergency treatment for high blood pressure at home

Here is dosing information for two medications commonly used to acutely lower blood pressure in the ED:

Clevedipine might have some added benefit over nicardipine including quicker onset and shorter half-life but most emergency physicians have less clinical experience with this newer medication. Where guidelines do not specify the recommended agent to use I chose to list nicardipine or labetalol as the agents of choice because of widespread availability. To make decisions in clinical practice please read and reference official published guidelines. The information provided in this blog post is only intended for educational purposes. The following is my approach to blood pressure management in the ED based on available guidelines. In spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage guidelines recommend prompt treatment of hypertension while in traumatic brain injury guidelines emphasize aggressive treatment of hypotension but do not provide any recommendations on treating hypertension. Another example of the controversy of blood pressure management is when it comes to management of spontaneous vs traumatic intracranial hemorrhage. In some conditions like aortic dissection aggressive management of blood pressure and heart rate can be lifesaving while in other conditions such as ischemic stroke aggressively lowering the blood pressure is likely to cause worse outcomes. Guidelines are made to benefit the majority of patients with each condition but it is always necessary to consider individual factors such as age, preexisting uncontrolled hypertension and other comorbidities.

Different blood pressure targets have been proposed for a variety of emergency medical and traumatic conditions.

Jonsson is a second year emergency medicine resident at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MNĪcute blood pressure management in the emergency department is in my mind one of the most confusing and controversial topics in emergency medicine.

Emergency treatment for high blood pressure at home