Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about hypertension.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

you can follow along at zero to finals.com slash hypertension

or in the cardiology section of the zero to finals medicine book.

So let's get straight into it.

Hypertension is the term used to describe high blood pressure.

The nice guidelines from 2019 on hypertension

suggest making a diagnosis of hypertension

when there's a blood pressure

above 140 millimeters of mercury systolic over 90 millimeters of mercury diastolic in the clinic,

or 135 over 85 with ambulatory or home readings.

Let's talk about the causes of hypertension.

Essential hypertension accounts for 95% of hypertension cases,

and this is also known as primary hypertension,

and it essentially means that the high blood pressure has developed on its own and does not have a secondary cause.

There are a number of secondary causes of hypertension

that you can remember using the mnemonic rope.

R for renal disease,

and this is the most common cause of secondary hypertension,

if the blood pressure is very high

or it doesn't respond to treatment,

...