Study of data from 22,672 patients with stable coronary artery disease enrolled in the CLARIFY registry (including patients from 45 countries) and treated for hypertension showed that n on-fatal and fatal outcomes decreased as blood pressure was reduced to a 120–139 mm Hg systolic or a 70–79 mm Hg diastolic range over 5 years of treatment. Blood pressure reductions to less than 120/70 mm Hg, however, were accompanied by a marked increase of cardiovascular risk that involved cause-specific events such as myocardial infarction and heart failure, only sparing stroke, whose risk remained similar to that seen at the higher blood pressure values.
This finding warns against an extensive extrapolation of the results of the SPRINT trial (ie, that an approach of the lower the achieved blood pressure, the better, should be pursued in all individuals at high cardiovascular risk).…
