Tuesday, September 14, 2010

How high can human blood pressure go? -

One of my uncles (now deceased) used to brag that his blood pressure was so high, it couldn t be measured with an ordinary sphygmomanometer. I was just curious how high could get or if there was any record for hypertension ever recorded.

I had a patient once who came in with a cocaine overdose. His systolic (higher #) was higher than 300 -- that s the highest our monitors could read, and his was higher than that. His diastolic was 220. His B/P readings corelated both by art line and cuff. We put him on a drug called Nipride and lowered it, and when the cocaine wore off, his pressure returned to normal. He survived with no bad effects, but he s the exception, not the rule...

I checked the Internet and couldn t find any records for highest blood pressure reading. I remember watching a show on it stating if you go from a sauna and jump into a lake with cold or freezing cold temperature your blood pressure could spike as high as 300 or higher. This one man did that and an aneurysm in his brain bust and he died form that. Maybe the blood pressure cuff they were using wasn t long enough to go completely around his arm and give a proper reading. Uncontrolled hypertension eventually takes a great toll on the body.

I am not sure how high it quot;can goquot; but I know that one day I wasn t feeling really well and I knew my BP was out of control so I went to see my doc and mine was 250/130. He told me that was a record for him in his practice and put some meds in me right away! He monitored me with an EKG, nearly constant BP readings and asked me if I was sure I didn t have a headache and told me if it didn t go down during the next hour he would have to send me to the hospital. Thankfully it dropped to a much safer level. The risk of stroke was far to high. I now take BP meds daily

This highest that we can read it on a meter is 300. Normal BP is 120/80....But I have seen people with 240/180 etc and they are walking talking fine, then the next with that BP you can just look at them and tell they are sick... Jenn

The maximum pressure which the human left ventricle can generate is about 300 mm Hg.

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