Diagnosis and treatment of low blood pressure in a Canadian community.

Overview

When some participants in a hypertension screening program reported a previous diagnosis or treatment of low blood pressure a similar program was established at two shopping centres in Montreal to identify and characterize subjects labelled as having low blood pressure. Of the 1019 subjects screened (434 men and 585 women) 275 (27.0%) reported a previous diagnosis of low blood pressure and 278 (27.3%) a previous diagnosis of hypertension. Low blood pressure was significantly more likely to be diagnosed in women than in men. Of the 181 subjects reporting a diagnosis of low blood pressure in the absence of other diagnoses, 69 had received treatment for this condition; fewer than 10 years of education had been completed by 46.4% of the treated subjects and 34.8% of those not treated, compared with 20.0% of the subjects in whom no diagnosis had been made. Assuming that these findings do not reflect an idiosyncrasy of the community or of the population studied, the public and personal health implications of the erroneous diagnosis and treatment of this nondisease need to be assessed.