April 20, 2021
Patients in the SPRINT trial with the highest predicted risk of CVD at baseline derived the greatest benefit from intensive blood pressure lowering, but they also faced an increased likelihood of treatment-related adverse events.
Researchers say that since most of those events were mild and fleeting, particularly compared to the severity of the outcomes prevented, intensive therapy is worth the risk. Still, the findings, from a secondary analysis, have important implications for guidelines and practice.
“What we were hoping is that we would find a large number of people who derived a lot of benefit at very low risk of adverse events. And that is what we did not find,” senior author Andrew Moran, MD (Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, NY), told TCTMD.