THURSDAY, Feb. 26 (HealthDay News) -- In dialysis patients, treatment with blood pressure-lowering medications may significantly reduce rates of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, according to the results of a study published online Feb. 26 in The Lancet.
Hiddo J. Lambers Heerspink, of the University of Sydney in Australia, and colleagues conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of eight studies involving 1,679 patients and 495 cardiovascular events.
The researchers found that patients who were actively treated for high blood pressure had a significantly lower mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure (4.5 mm Hg and 2.3 mm Hg, respectively) than controls. They also found that those who received blood pressure-lowering treatment had a lower risk of cardiovascular events, all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality (relative risks, 0.71, 0.80 and 0.71, respectively).
"If our data are applied to a broad population of patients on dialysis with an annual mortality rate of about 10 percent, we calculate that blood pressure-lowering treatment could prevent two of the 10 deaths expected to occur in every 100 patients per year," the authors conclude. "This absolute benefit will be greater for individuals at higher absolute risk, and is much greater than that reported for many other interventions in routine use."
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