Therapy for Systolic Hypertension

Excerpt

To the editor: The paper by Rabkin, Mathewson, and Tate (1) emphasizes the predictive value of systolic hypertension for development of vascular disease. The authors close by asking that the effectiveness of treatment for this be carefully studied.

The editorial note in the same issue (2) appears, however, to assume that "systolic hypertension," proven anew to be a risk factor for vascular complications, must therefore now be treated. This is a very important matter. Very large numbers of people are involved in potential benefits or risks; recommendations of this nature should be based on evidence showing that patients will in