Blood pressure spikes, or hypertensive crises, hospitalizations nearly doubled in the U.S. from 2002 to 2014, a study published Jan. 27 in the Journal of the American Heart Association found.
Researchers analyzed data from the National Inpatient Sample involving sex‐pooled and sex‐specific trends in hypertensive crisis hospitalization and case fatality rates over serial time periods: 2002 to 2006, 2007 to 2011, and 2012 to 2014.
Three key findings:
- There were more than 918,000 hospitalizations and nearly 4,400 in-hospital deaths related to hypertensive crises nationwide.
- Hypertensive crises accounted for 0.17 percent of all hospital admissions for men in 2002 and 0.39 percent in 2014.
- Hypertensive crises accounted for 0.16 percent of hospitalizations for women in 2002 and 0.34 percent in 2014.