The Effect of Pre-discharge Blood Pressure of Patients With Asymptomatic Severe Hypertension in Emergency Department

Completed

Brief Summary: The current guideline of asymptomatic severe hypertension (ASH) treatment in emergency department (ED) recommends through low level of evidence that the patients should not be rapidly decreased their BP in ED but instead receive oral antihypertensive treatment and close outpatient follow-up is needed. Unfortunately, there was some ambiguity in the time point of BP measurement in ED described in the past literature because high BP on ED admission may significantly decrease within hours without any medications. The importance of pre-ED discharge BP, which can still be critically high, that may affect the follow-up outcome has never been investigated. The study aim of this study is to evaluate the physicians' treatment strategies as well as immediate clinical outcomes between patients with severely- and moderately-elevated pre-discharge BP after management of ASH its in ED during the recent recommendation. The secondary outcome is to compare the BP at follow-up in these two groups.

Detailed Description: The investigators will follow the patients with asymptomatic severe hypertension who attend ED of King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital (KCMH), an urban, 1,500-bed, university-affiliated, tertiary care hospital as well as treatment strategies. A management strategy whether to start the drugs in ED with or without a period of observation or immediately after discharge without any observation depends on the treating physicians' judgment. The investigators predefined the pre-discharge BP at ED into two groups; high BP (pre-discharge SBP \< 180 mmHg) and severely high BP (pre-discharge SBP \>= 180mmHg) groups. Every eligible patient was scheduled for the internal medicine clinic for continuous care of the high blood pressure within 3-7 days after discharge. Medical records were retrieved for the follow-up BP, compliance and associated adverse events at the clinic. The investigators will make telephone follow-ups to the participants or their contact personnel in every case at 10 days after ED presentation to identify the deceased cases or those with major morbidity as well as the compliance to their medications.

Recruitment & Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria

Exclusion Criteria

Acute end-organ damage related to severe hypertension that required rapid intravenous antihypertensive drugs for acute treatment involving cardiovascular (acute chest pain, heart failure, acute coronary syndromes, acute aortic syndromes), renal (acute kidney injury), ocular (retinal hemorrhage or hypertensive retinopathy) and central nervous system (seizure, acute cerebrovascular diseases, hypertensive encephalopathy)
Hypertension caused by medical toxicology (e.g. use of sympathomimetic drugs (amphetamine and its derivatives), alcohol withdrawal syndrome
Significantly decreased renal function (serum creatinine ≥ 1.5 mg/dL or creatinine clearance ≤ 30 ml/min)
Pregnant women
Moderate to severe pain (pain score on visual analog scale ≥ 5 centimeters out of 10)
BP decrease to less than 180 mmHg after 10-minute bed rest without any medical treatment
Having concurrent medical conditions that needed hospitalization.

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
High SBP+antihypertensive meds	Antihypertensive meds	Patients with pre-discharge systolic blood pressure at discharge \< 180 mmHg
Severely high SBP+antihypertensive meds	Antihypertensive meds	Patients with pre-discharge systolic blood pressure at discharge \>= 180 mmHg

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Number of Participants Who Died Within 7 Days After Discharge From the Emergency Department	7 days	Number of participants who died from hypertension-related events within 7 days after discharge from the emergency department.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Number of Participants Who Had Major Hypertensive-related Events After Discharge From the Emergency Department	7 days	Participants who had major hypertensive-related events defined by those who had one or more of the followings: acute chest pain, heart failure, acute coronary syndromes, acute aortic syndromes, retinal/vitreous hemorrhage, hypertensive retinopathy, seizure, acute cerebrovascular diseases, hypertensive encephalopathy, which occurred within 7 days after discharge from emergency department.
Systolic Blood Pressure at Follow-up	3 to 7 days	Systolic blood pressure at follow-up measured by physicians that were non-investigators and unaware of the study.