Hypertension Guidelines Changing: Evidence, not Extrapolation

In short order, physicians’ marching orders are moving away from numeric targets that were essentially hopeful extrapolations. “If lowering blood sugar a little improves outcomes a little, it must be that lowering it a lot is even better”, was the sort of conclusion that resulted in the arms race of chronic disease management in primary care.

New guidelines on hypertension are getting back to what the studies actually proved, and the numeric targets are loosening up. Now we can finally practice more EVIDENCE BASED medicine.

An obvious question will be: Now that we have guidelines that better match the evidence, when will physicians’ report cards start reflecting this? A lot of the numeric targets are hardwired into EMRs and quality assurance programs, not to mention physician compensation formulas.

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1791422