Suggest Medication For High BP In An Elderly

Posted on Thu, 21 Dec 2017

Question: i am the care taker for my my 88 year old mother who has a history of high blood pressure. currently her systolic is running normal to slitely elevated but the diostolic is running low 160/45 150/52. my question is would there be a better Rx or Rx's to try to help level this out?? current Rx's listed below

Answered by Dr. Ilir Sharka (42 minutes later)

Brief Answer:
I would recommend as follows:

Detailed Answer:
Hello!

Welcome and thank you for asking on HCM!

I passed carefully through your question and would explain that this big difference between systolic and diastolic blood pressure (also called pulse pressure), is related to the age.

I would also like to know her symptoms. Does she feel dizziness, lightheadedness or fatigue?

I agree with you that her therapy may influence in her low diastolic blood pressure values. But before coming into this conclusion, I would first recommend performing some tests to investigate for other possible disorders (beside age), that may lead to this clinical scenario:

- a chest X ray study
- a cardiac ultrasound and resting ECG, to examine her heart function and structure
- complete blood count for anemia
- fasting glucose for diabetes
- kidney and liver function tests
- blood electrolytes
- thyroid hormone levels.

If all these tests result normal and she has symptoms like dizziness or lightheadedness, I would recommend discussing with her doctor on the possibility of stopping amlodipine, and switching to another anti-hypertensive drug, like moxonidine.

Hope you will find this answer helpful!

Kind regards,

Dr. Iliri

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Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar