Hypertensive patients beware of “kidney damage”

  Recently, some hypertensive patients have been seen one after another, because they do not pay attention to hypertension treatment and necessary examination, when they appear swelling, weakness and other uncomfortable symptoms, they have already complicated kidney damage, proteinuria, and even enter the uremic phase.  Many people know that hypertensive patients are prone to stroke and cause coronary heart disease, but in fact, long-term elevation of blood pressure in hypertensive patients can lead to kidney damage, and about 15% of patients will develop uremia. In the early stage of the disease, except for a small number of patients can appear increased nocturia, most of them do not have obvious clinical manifestations, urine routine examination, blood creatinine most in the normal range, if you wait until the urine routine appears abnormal, or blood creatinine rise to attract attention, the kidney damage has entered the middle and late stage. Therefore, early detection through the necessary laboratory tests and active intervention is an important measure to prevent and treat hypertensive kidney damage.    1, pay attention to regular screening urine microalbumin microalbuminuria is an early sign of kidney damage, but also a sign of systemic vascular endothelial damage, because microalbuminuria stage often lacks clinical symptoms, so need screening to be detected in time. For patients with long duration of hypertension, unsatisfactory blood pressure control, or a combination of multiple risk factors, especially diabetes mellitus, early screening for microalbuminuria should be emphasized. Once microalbuminuria is present, active intervention should be performed to reduce the progression of renal damage and cardiovascular disease complications and related morbidity and mortality. Microalbuminuria is not irreversible if early detection and timely intervention are possible. It is recommended that hypertensive patients should have their urine routine and urine microalbumin checked every six months and their blood creatinine checked every year.  2, actively lowering blood pressure to achieve the standard control of blood pressure at the ideal level is a prerequisite for preventing kidney damage. China’s new 2010 edition of the “Guidelines for the Prevention and Treatment of Hypertension” requires patients with ordinary hypertension to lower their blood pressure to below 140/90mmHg, and patients with kidney disease, diabetes or coronary heart disease to lower their blood pressure to below 130/80mmHg. Some hypertensive patients do not pay attention to blood pressure control even if their blood pressure is very high because there are no obvious symptoms, and it is more common for them not to take medication or to take medication irregularly, and once “kidney damage” occurs, they look for “kidney preservation drugs” everywhere. In fact, regardless of ordinary hypertension or early kidney damage patients, actively lowering blood pressure to meet the standard is the best “kidney medicine”. Of course, lowering blood pressure is not the faster the better, for the elderly, a long course of disease or have kidney damage or other complications of patients, the speed of lowering blood pressure should be slower, and blood pressure should not be lowered too low.  3, the reasonable choice of antihypertensive drugs and treatment plan antihypertensive drugs are a wide variety, the indications vary. It is not the case that the drug that can bring down the blood pressure is a good drug. For hypertensive patients who have combined with kidney damage, the basic principle of the choice of antihypertensive drugs is no nephrotoxicity, while having a renal protective effect. Studies have shown that angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor antagonists are the more certain ones that have renal protective effects while lowering blood pressure.  Antihypertensive treatment should give priority to long-acting agents, which are administered once a day and can effectively and smoothly control 24h blood pressure, especially effective in controlling morning peak blood pressure and nighttime blood pressure, avoiding large fluctuations in blood pressure, thus achieving renal and cardiac, cerebral, vascular and other organs protection.  In conclusion, hypertensive patients should pay attention to their “kidneys” and go to the hospital regularly for kidney function tests, especially urine microalbumin as one of the important screening indicators for early kidney damage in hypertension, so as to achieve early detection and treatment and avoid the development of uremia.