TITLE:
Empirical Studies of Effects of High Blood Pressure on Medical Costs and Heart Disease: Is the 2017 ACC/AHA Guideline Supported by Enough Evidence?
AUTHORS:
Kazumitsu Nawata, Moriyo Kimura
KEYWORDS:
2017 ACC/AHA Hypertension Guideline, Hypertension, Blood Pressure, Medical Costs, Cardiovascular and Heart Disease
JOURNAL NAME:
Health,
Vol.10 No.11,
November
20,
2018
ABSTRACT: Background: The American College of Cardiology (ACC), American Heart Association (AHA) and other organizations announced a new hypertension guideline in November 2017. However, previous studies have pointed out that this new guideline might lack sufficient evidence to justify its use. Data and Methods: The effects of blood pressure (BP) on medical costs and on the probability of having heart disease as anamnesis are analyzed. We used a dataset containing 175,123 medical checkups and 6,312,125 receipts from 88,211 individuals obtained from three health insurance societies from April 2013 to March 2016. The dataset was divided into subgroups based on whether the patients had diabetes and took hypertension medications. The power transformation and probit models were used in the study. Results: We observed negative effects of systolic BP (SBP) on medical costs in most subgroups. We could not find evidence that higher SBP made the medical costs and probability of having heart diseases higher. The results raise uncertainty about the reliability of the new guideline, at least for SBP. Conclusion: The results of this study did not support the new 2017 ACC/AHA guideline, at least for SBP. The new guideline must be more carefully reevaluated by additional studies. Limitations: The dataset was observatory, the sample period was only 3 years, and we could not complete a time-series analysis of individuals.