Heart patients and low blood pressure
From Times wire reports
Patients with heart failure who also have low blood pressure -- usually taken as a good sign -- may have a higher risk of dying.
Researchers, writing in the Nov. 8 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn., said they had studied the records of 48,612 heart failure patients seen at 259 U.S. hospitals between March 2003 and December 2004.
The patients with higher systolic blood pressures (the “top” number) at the time of hospital admission had substantially lower death rates, both in the hospital and after discharge, than patients with lower blood pressure readings.
