Research shows previous 140mm standard must drop to 120mm, writes Gina Kolata WHEN the federal government announced in September that it had halted a large blood pressure study because its results were so compelling, doctors were left in frustrating limbo.The announcement said researchers had found that driving systolic blood pressure to levels far below what current guidelines recommend — less than 120mm instead of 140mm or 150mm of mercury — could save lives and prevent heart disease and strokes. But they declined to release data on the number of lives saved, number of heart attacks prevented, or other critical measures."How can anyone do anything different tomorrow with regard to blood pressure control without knowing more about what they found?" asked Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale, echoing the concerns of other specialists.On Monday, reporting at an American Heart Association meeting in Orlando, Florida, and in a paper published simultaneously in The New England Journa...
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