Redefining Hypertension — Assessing the New Blood-Pressure Guidelines

Like physical guidelines designed to ensure that hikers stay on the safest path through tricky terrain, expert medical guidelines aim to steer clinicians toward best practices. The new Guideline for the Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Management of High Blood Pressure in Adults issued by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) tries to accomplish this task by extending the Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee (JNC7) and the Expert Panel Report to include updated data from clinical trials and by accentuating previously underemphasized sections of the 2003 and 2013 reports.