Open AccessAtherosclerotic Renal Artery Stenosis and Renovascular Hypertension: Clinical Diagnosis and Indications for Revascularization
Author(s) -
Carter Barry L.,
Hartz Arthur,
Bergus George,
Dawson Jeffrey D.,
Doucette William R.,
Stewart Janyce J.,
Xu Yinghui
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the journal of clinical hypertension
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.909
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1751-7176
pISSN - 1524-6175
DOI - 10.1111/j.1524-6175.2006.05601.x
Subject(s) - medicine , blood pressure , cardiology , odds ratio , renovascular hypertension , renal artery stenosis , multivariate analysis , revascularization , multivariate statistics , renal artery , kidney , myocardial infarction , statistics , mathematics
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the cross‐sectional relationship between physician knowledge of hypertension guidelines and blood pressure (BP) control. The authors evaluated a sample of primary care faculty (n=32) and a sample of their patients (n=613). When treating patients as independent observations, the authors found an inverse relationship ( r =−0.524; p =0.002) where higher knowledge scores were associated with lower BP control. The authors conducted a multivariate analysis to accommodate the non‐independence due to random physician effects and found that there was no longer a significant association between knowledge and BP control, but there was still a trend (odds ratio=0.84; p =0.130). This study demonstrates that there is no evidence that high knowledge of hypertension guidelines will improve BP control rates and that higher knowledge may actually be associated with lower BP control. Strategies that are designed only to improve knowledge of hypertension guidelines are insufficient to improve BP control rates.