High blood pressure: An obscuring misnomer?

Abstract

High blood pressure (BP) has been identified as a major risk factor for cardiovascular complications. Although two-way association between BP and hypertensive complications makes hypertension a near-ideal biomarker, BP as "the cause" for the complications of HT per se still needs more evidence. Another entirely possible hemodynamic candidate for causing hypertensive cardiovascular adverse events can be flow or its iterations, which might have escaped the attention because of its perfect correlation with pressure and harder technical measurement. In this article, we analyze the evidence in hand to compare flow- and pressure-related phenomena to delineate which of the two is the dominant mediator of complications related to hypertension and should be the target for therapy. A "flow-" rather than a " pressure-" based factor, as the causative or major driving mediator of common hypertensive complications, may change our understanding of hypertension pathophysiology.