Daily Dose: Blood Pressure Control Declined during Early Months of Pandemic

Patient Care brings primary care clinicians a lot of medical news every day—it’s easy to miss an important study. The Daily Dose provides a concise summary of one of the website's leading stories you may not have seen.

On November 1, 2022, we reviewed a study published in Hypertension titled "Changes in blood pressure outcomes among hypertensive individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic: A time series analysis in three US healthcare organizations."

The study

Researchers examined the electronic health records of 137 593 adults with HTN and compared BP outcomes before the pandemic (August 2018-January 2020) with those during the peak of the pandemic (April 2020- January 2021).

During the pandemic, systolic and diastolic BP increased by 1.79 mm Hg and 1.30 mm, respectively, compared with the prepandemic period. Also, the proportion of patients with controlled BP decreased by 3.43 percentage points. The frequency of documented BP readings sharply declined in the early stages of the pandemic, then gradually rebounded later in the pandemic but never returned to the prepandemic baseline. This was partly due to cancellations or postponements of face-to-face office visits.

Clinical implications

"Opportunities to ensure ongoing access to health care with telemedicine and home blood pressure monitoring may mitigate adverse impacts on blood pressure control for future disasters/emergencies," wrote authors.

Click here for the full study review.