Some parents feel comfortable doing it at home.
White coat hypertension is diagnosed by taking the child’s blood pressure outside of the doctor’s office. Everyone’s blood pressure changes from time to time-it’s lower when you’re asleep, for example-but if a child’s blood pressure continually rises when she’s anxious (such as before a test), it can be sign of high blood pressure at other times and potentially cause the same kinds of damage that standard hypertension causes. By some estimations, between 30 and 40 percent of kids who have high blood pressure in the office actually have white-coat hypertension.
“White coat hypertension” is when a child’s blood pressure readings are high at the doctor’s office (mostly because she’s anxious, which can cause blood pressure to rise), but normal outside of the office (for example at home or at school). We are dedicated to educating families to assist with appropriate dietary and activity choices to improve overall health and reduce the risk of hypertension. Some things are being done-nutritional information is being made more readily available, there’s one push to provide healthy options in schools and another to remove soft drinks from them-but still, it often comes down to families making the right decisions. We believe that promoting healthy lifestyle choices will help combat this trend and will go a long way towards preventing primary hypertension in children (and keep adults healthier, too). Pediatricians are making great efforts to prevent obesity and stem the tide of problems that accompany it. Other organs-if left untreated, hypertension makes it harder for blood to reach many different parts of the body, including the eyes and the brain, and can lead to blindness and strokes. This extra fluid can raise blood pressure even more. Kidneys-if the blood vessels in the kidneys are damaged, they may stop removing waste and extra fluid from the body. There’s also compelling evidence that some of these changes are seen in children with high blood pressure.īlood vessels-high blood pressure can damage blood vessels throughout the body, which makes it harder for organs to work efficiently. But we do know that in adults, hypertension increases the chance of complications in the heart, blood vessels, and kidneys. Since hypertension in children has historically been understudied, there isn’t a lot of data about exactly what these changes mean. Hypertension causes changes in the structures of the blood vessels and heart. While kids with hypertension are unlikely to have heart attacks and strokes, it still has significant risks. What complications are associated with hypertension? The rise in the number of children with primary hypertension in the United States is thought to correlate with the rise of obesity. it’s often thought of as not something that really affects kids.it can be difficult to measure in infants and young children.And there’s reason to believe that hypertension is vastly underdiagnosed in children, since: A recent study that looked at 15,000 adolescents found that nearly one in five had hypertension.
Hypertension is becoming increasingly common in children and adolescents.