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Monday, January 17, 2005The team developed their new approach in hopes of reducing the inconvenience and cost related to blood pressure monitoring. The study included 106 patients who first attended the Hypertension Care Clinic for several days in a row. A drug treatment plan was drawn up for each of the patients, and they were educated about hypertension and cardiovascular disease preventive measures. The subjects were then instructed to measure their blood pressure twice daily at home for a 7-day period at 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months. The results were sent to the clinic nurse and drug treatment was intensified if blood pressure readings were not less than 135/85. With this strategy, the percentage of patients who achieved this target level of blood pressure control increased from 0 percent at the start of the study to 63 percent after one year. 'This model should reduce both cost and inconvenience associated with the treatment of hypertension,' Canzanello's group suggests. 'Too often, patients with hypertension are 'fit into' the course of a busy practitioner's day through a series of visits over weeks to months, and patients never receive the focused attention necessary at the outset of care,' Dr. Andrew B. Covit, at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in South River, New Jersey, maintains in an accompanying editorial. The only problem with the approach is that it misses a chance to check for side-effects and to answer questions. Most doctors offices are overwhelmed by the phones as it is, so a patient is likely to get less attention via phone than in a face-to-face encounter. In that sense, the study is somewhat of an artificial environment. Unlike lawyers, we don't charge for phone calls, though, so there's no denying that it's a cheaper alternative. posted by Sydney on 1/17/2005 01:29:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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