Screening For Hypertension Annually Compared With Current Practice

The Article in Brief

Screening for Hypertension Annually Compared With Current Practice

Gregory M. Garrison , and colleagues

Background This study examines whether checking blood pressure annually, instead of at every outpatient office visit, may improve the screening test's ability to correctly identify those without hypertension (specificity) without sacrificing its ability to identify those with hypertension (sensitivity).

What This Study Found Comparing the usual screening practice of checking blood pressure at every visit with a second strategy that uses only annual blood pressure measurements in a group of 440 adults over a 5-year study period, researchers found the reduced frequency of screening produced a significant decrease in the false-positive rate from 30 percent to 18 percent of nonhypertensive patients. They found no statistically significant difference in sensitivity between the 2 methods. When applied to the roughly 2,000 healthy adults cared for by a typical family physician, the annual screening strategy results in 232 fewer patients needing further workup over 5 years.

Implications

• In addition to improving the false-positive rate, reducing the number of unnecessary blood pressure screenings in healthy adults provides other benefits, including increased clinic efficiency, reduced clerical burdens, and more clinical staff time to more accurately measure blood pressures.