Antihypertensive Therapy

Antihypertensive therapy is the use of medication to lower elevated blood pressure, aiming to reduce the risk of stroke, heart attack, heart failure and kidney disease that sustained high blood pressure carries. The drug classes in routine use, including thiazide diuretics, beta blockers, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers and calcium channel blockers, were developed chiefly in the decades following the Second World War, replacing earlier and much cruder measures such as severe dietary salt restriction and surgical sympathectomy that had been the main options before effective blood-pressure-lowering drugs existed. Because hypertension is usually symptomless, antihypertensive therapy is typically taken long-term to prevent future complications rather than to relieve any immediate symptom, and treatment is generally guided by regular blood pressure measurement against an accepted target range.