Paul returns to the Practice Nurse after carrying out home monitoring for a week.
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Patient information about left ventricular hypertrophy: Blood Pressure UK (Enlarged Heart LVH)
Practice Nurse: Paul, how are you?
Paul: I’m surprised, anxious even. To be honest, I was expecting my blood pressure to be normal when I checked it at home. I thought that the lad at the gym had made a mistake and that it was just high when I saw the doctor because of the worry and fuss of it all. But almost every reading at home was above the numbers you had recommended.
Practice Nurse: You’re right, your blood pressure is higher than we would like it. As we said before, it should be below 140/90mmHg or, for home monitoring, it should be below 135/85mmHg. The good news is all your bloods came back normal. As you know, the heart tracing suggested that your left ventricle may have been enlarged, however, the scan result was normal. The scan is a much more accurate assessment of left ventricular size than the ECG is.
Paul: So, what does that mean? Do I have to take more pills?
Practice Nurse: Well let’s see. We need to calculate your stroke and heart attack risk over the next ten years….
Paul has stage 1 hypertension and does not need medication for his hypertension until his ASSIGN score is greater than 20,which equates to a ten year CVD risk of 20%
Page last reviewed: 17 Sep 2020
