Happy guideline season!

I’ve been hearing about JNC 8 for so long, that I thought it didn’t really exist.  Thanks to some persistent hypertension experts, it is here at long last.  Here’s a quick review of the major points. I’m sure that we will see some commentary in the days and weeks to come, I’ll try to keep you updated on that as well.   I’d love to hear what you think- start the conversation in the comments below.

Higher BP targets

We are used to aiming for 140/90 for most people, and 130/80 for those with CKD, diabetes, CAD, and other comorbidities.  But new evidence  has emerged that these may not be so great, particularly for elderly patients.  So JNC 8 says- Adults 18-60 (even with DM or CKD) should aim for BP <140/90.  We can be a little more relaxed with patients over 60, and aim at 150/90 for them, so long as they don’t have CKD or DM.  Most of this change comes because there really was no outcome data for our prior target, and it seems that getting people to the 140s systolic provides just as much benefit as the 130s range.

Relaxed first line medicine choices

We’ve known that this was coming for a while.  JNC 7 recommended thiazides as first line for all, but there was never any real data to back that up.  So JNC 8 says that we can use thiazides, ACE-I/ARBs, or calcium channel blockers as a first choice for most patients.  They do acknowledge the racial difference in response to ACE inhibition, and recommend that we DON’T use ACE/ARB as first line for our black patients. EXCEPT (there’s always an exception) that for patients with chronic kidney disease (but not necessarily diabetes without ckd), use ACE-I first, no matter the race.

Second, and third, and fourth line medicines

Really not much different here, except there are not really recommendations about when to start two medicines at first visit.  JNC 8 says we can pick a variety of treatment strategies– maximize one medicine at a time, add a second agent before maximizing the first, or start two medicines at once.  When you add agents; pick from that first line list (thiazides, ACE/ARB, CCB) until you’ve used them all, then use aldosterone antagonists, beta blockers, central agents, or other vasodilators.  They do recommend avoiding ACE-I and ARB combos for most patients.

What’s Missing

JNC 7 discussed prehypertension, secondary hypertension, resistant hypertension, adherence, how to measure blood pressure, and lots of other related issues. The JNC 8 group just picked 3 questions that they felt were most important: does starting treatment at a particular threshold improve outcomes, does a particular treatment goal improve outcomes, do various drugs have important differences in risk/benefit calculation and outcomes.  Very evidence based and outcome oriented, which is kind of refreshing.

What about my patients now?

For all of us who have been trying to follow JNC 7 (and the subsequent performance measures created from that guideline), should we go adjusting therapy on our patients to meet new targets?  No, say these experts.  If your patient has a blood pressure of <150/90 on their current therapy, and is doing well, no need to change. Stay tuned to see if any of our performance targets change.

A great big picture algorithm from the JNC 8 group is here, and the link to the guidelines themselves is here (on the JAMA website subscription may be needed).

Here’s a great, plain language summary from the NYT Well blog.