RSS Feeds
Will Running the Numbers First Violate the Principles of Patient-Centered Care?
- Lawrence S. Phillips, MD; and
- Jennifer G. Twombly, MD
- From the Veterans' Affairs Medical Center, Decatur, GA 30033, and Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30322.
IN RESPONSE:
We thank the responders to our editorial for their thoughtful concerns, but we believe that hypertension management needs improvement and we would like to address the issues raised in these letters.
Although “clinical inertia” can be a pejorative term, acknowledging our own deficiencies (1) was a key first step in improving our care (2). Requiring that every detail of recommendations for care be based on evidence from clinical trials can lead to evidence-based paralysis (3)—failure to act in the absence of specific trial-based evidence. The goal of systolic blood pressure of less than …
