Withdrawing antihypertensive treatment

Considerations regarding withholding/withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.

Ethical aspects of withdrawing and withholding treatment.

Decisions about withdrawing and withholding treatment are common in health care. During almost every encounter between health professionals and patients a decision needs to be made about treatment options. In most cases these choices do not pose any difficulty, for example, starting antibiotics when a patient has an infection. However, decisions not to treat, or to stop treating, raise fundamen...

Antihypertensive treatment and dementia.

Dementia is a syndrome of global cognitive de­ cline which inter venes with social and occupation­ al functioning. The two most common dementias are Alzheimer's disease (AD), caused by neuro­ degeneration, and vascular dementia, caused by cerebrovascular disease. These two causes often co­occur (often referred to as " mixed dementia "), especially after the age of 80. Dementia is com­ mon in th...

Antihypertensive treatment with diuretics: antediluvian

Thiazide diuretics were among the first drugs able to lower blood pressure with minimal side-effects in a large proportion of the hypertensive population. In addition they appeared to potentiate nearly all other hypotensive drugs. Hence they were advised as the mainstay of antihypertensive treatment and were used in all large-scale trials [1] which showed beneficial effect of blood pressure low...

Historical Development of Antihypertensive Treatment

Growth of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century, 2742 The Measurement of Blood Pressure, 2743 Forerunners of Modern Treatment, 2743 Low-Salt Diets, 2743 Surgical Sympathectomy, 2744 The Beginnings of Drug Treatment, 2744 Ganglion-Blocking Drugs, 2745 Veratrum Viride, Hydrazaline, and Reserpine, 2746 The Modern Era of Antihypertensive Drugs, 2747 Thiazide Diuretics, 2747 Guanethidine and Alpha-Met...