Blood Pressure is a GP thing right?

So we spend a lot of our time worrying about shock/ hypotension and are probably better at putting people's blood pressure up (white coat hypertension). Just occasionally though you will meet somebody whose blood pressure is too high and needs to come down.

What constitutes a hypertensive emergency? The section in the BNF is rather good for this and was my go to resource for part A.

Important numbers are 180/ or /110, the second step is to decide if there is end organ dysfunction:

1. Hypertensive encephalopathy
2. Acute LVF
3. Acute MI
4. Aortic Dissection
5. Intracranial Haemorrhage
6. AKI
7. Eclampsia

The presence of any of the above is hypertensive emergency.

Without them it is hypertensive urgency.

Remember BP = CO x SvR

Treatment options mostly cause some form of vasodilatation: sodium nitroprusside/ labetalol/ nitrates.