2020–2021 BCSC Basic and Clinical Science Course™
1 Update on General Medicine
Chapter 3: Hypertension
Special Considerations
Hypertensive Crisis
Patients with severe BP elevation and acute target-organ damage (eg, encephalopathy, MI, unstable angina, pulmonary edema, stroke, head trauma, eclampsia, or aortic dissection) should be admitted to the hospital for emergency parenteral antihypertensive therapy. Patients with marked BP elevation but without target-organ damage may not require hospital admission, but they should be treated urgently with combination oral antihypertensive drugs. Identifiable causes of hypertension should be sought, and these patients should be carefully monitored for target-organ damage.
Excerpted from BCSC 2020-2021 series: Section 1 - Update on General Medicine. For more information and to purchase the entire series, please visit https://www.aao.org/bcsc.