Does the content of this make any sense to you?
Does the content of this make any sense to you? Because it doesn't to me. I mean, right off the bat it says that they "defined hypertension-related death as any mention of hypertension on the death certificate." Ok. It's news to me that a death certificate lists anything other than the presumed or documented cause of death, but let's say it lists your whole medical history. Now all you're looking at it the prevalence of a given diagnosis among dead people. How does that translate to "the number of hypertension-related deaths increased 61.8%"? You can prove a causal relationship? And the study they link to about the cancer and hypertension thing was an observational study where the authors even say they can't claim a causal link. AUGH!
Am I missing something, here? Tell me, please, before something else causes my blood pressure to go up.
http://time.com/3758758/high-blood-pressure-related-deaths-are-way-up-cdc/
http://time.com/3758758/high-blood-pressure-related-deaths-are-way-up-cdc
Am I missing something, here? Tell me, please, before something else causes my blood pressure to go up.
http://time.com/3758758/high-blood-pressure-related-deaths-are-way-up-cdc/
http://time.com/3758758/high-blood-pressure-related-deaths-are-way-up-cdc
AFAIK they are supposed to list only the cause of death related things. So in that case it's cases where doctors think that hypertension was a factor in the death.
ReplyDeleteThen why need that tortured definition for the study? It strongly suggests something other than hypertension being the proximate cause of death. In addition, the reason they specifically mention heart disease and stroke is that hypertension is directly implicated in those. However, those would be listed as stroke or heart attack or aneurysm, etc. as the cause of death. In fact, they specifically say that the rates of death from stroke and heart disease went down.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't mention, but kidney disease is also linked with hypertension, but again, if kidney failure was the cause of death, that would be listed as the cause of death, not hypertension.
Plus, our definition of hypertension has just been completely revised, yet again, so there are probably people out there being coded as hypertensive who may not meet all the potential definitions of that condition.
Basically, this just seems incredibly sloppy and a terrible thing to use to suggest we should all suddenly jump to make policy and change treatment over.
So are they assuming everyone with heart disease and hypertension and dies has hypertensive heart disease, or is it really documented that the primary cause of the heart disease is the hypertension? Or is it that everyone has suddenly started to get very, very comprehensive in their coding because of the new federal mandates about billing and reimbursement? And that this is yet another billing database trolling study that is far more likely to prove not applicable or possibly even valid in real life? Gah, now I'm going to have to decide if I have the intestinal fortitude to go look up the actual study.
ReplyDeleteA 60% increase is huge! If that was valid, it's earth-shattering. Come on, people, think before you sound bite and promote.
Made me look. There is a lot more than just the proximate cause of death listed, apparently. And lots of reasons why it might be inaccurate.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/health/making-the-right-call-even-in-death.html?_r=0