What is high blood pressure?
Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a condition in which the force of blood flowing through a person’s blood vessels is consistently too high. Over time, this puts stress on the arteries, the heart and the kidneys, which increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.1
While diet, exercise and medications are the first-line treatments, it can still be challenging to meet the target blood pressure goal.
Normal blood pressure is <120/80 mmHg. A blood pressure of 130/80 mmHg is considered high blood pressure.² Depending upon your age and health status, your physician will help you identify the target blood pressure that is optimal for you.
Managing high blood pressure
Diet, exercise, and medications are the first-line treatments for hypertension. Less than half of patients treated for hypertension achieve a target BP of less than 140/90 mmHg.3
Appropriate lifestyle changes are the cornerstone for the prevention of hypertension and are also important for its treatment. If your blood pressure remains higher than 130/80 mmHg despite appropriate lifestyle changes, your physician will likely prescribe antihypertensive medications.2
A growing area of research
For patients unable to effectively control their blood pressure with lifestyle changes and medication therapy, a new class of interventional products have been developed for the treatment of hypertension using a procedure called renal denervation.4, 5 The 2023 ESH guidelines were modified to recognize the effectiveness and safety of RDN.6 RDN is also recognized as a treatment option that is additive or alternative to increasing medication in patients with uncontrolled resistant hypertension who do not have a secondary cause of hypertension.7
This alcohol-mediated RDN procedure has the objective of ablating these sympathetic nerves in order to reduce their overactivity. The overactive sympathetic nervous system may play a role not only in hypertension, but also in heart failure, kidney disease, metabolic syndrome and sleep apnea.8, 9
The TARGET BP Clinical Trial program is currently investigating the Peregrine System™ with dehydrated alcohol to treat uncontrolled hypertension.
1 https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov
2 Whelton et al, 2017 ACC/AHA /AAPA/ABC /ACPM/AGS/APhA/ ASH/ASPC/NMA/PCNA Guideline for the Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Management of High Blood Pressure in Adults, Journal of the American College of Cardiology May 2018, 71 (19) e127-e248; DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2017.11.006
3 Williams et al, 2018 ESC/ESH Guidelines for the management of arterial hypertension, European Heart Journal (2018), 1–98 doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehy339
4 Schmieder et al, European Society of Hypertension Position Paper on Renal Denervation 2018, Journal of Hypertension 2018 Oct;36(10):2042-2048.
5 Mahfoud et al, Proceedings from the 2nd European Consensus Conference for device-based therapies for hypertension: state of the art and considerations for the future, European Heart Journal (2018) 0,1-6 doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehy584
6 Grassi G. Devices-based treatment of hypertension: the position of the European Society of Hypertension (ESH) 2023 guidelines. Expert Rev Med Devices. 2024;21(4):265-267
7 Mancia G, Kreutz R, Brunstrӧm M, et al. 2023 ESH guidelines for the management of arterial hypertension the task force for the management of arterial hypertension of the European Society of Hypertension: Endorsed by the International Society of Hypertension (ISH) and the European Renal Association (ERA). J Hypertens. 2023;41(12):1874-2071
8 Mahfoud et al, Catheter-based renal denervation in hypertension: heading for new shores, J Hypertension 2018 January; 36(1): 41-42
9 Fisher et al, Central Sympathetic Overactivity: Maladies and Mechanisms, Auton Neurosci. 2009 June 15; 148(1-2): 5–15. doi:10.1016/j.autneu.2009.02.003