 Welcome to Nursing School Explained and this video on blood pressure guidelines. Whenever we talk about guidelines, we have to talk about whatever research was conducted to come up with these guidelines. And specifically for blood pressure guidelines, this was the sprint study and sprint stands for systolic blood pressure intervention trial. And so scientists have taken thousands of research subjects of people who participated in the study to see what level of blood pressure systolic as well as diastolic minimizes the risk of complications from uncontrolled blood pressure or from a blood pressure that's above a certain threshold. And here's what they came up with. So according to the sprint study and this are the guidelines this video is made in January of 2022 and these have been out for about a year or so. And so considered normal is less than 120 for systolic and less than 80. So the goal is always to have that normal blood pressure at this rate below 120 and below 80. Now if it's between 120 and 129 for systolic and still below 80, then it's considered elevated. So then usually lifestyle measures help the patient manage their blood pressure and I have a separate video on that. Now between 130 and 139 systolic or so instead of and we now have the word or a diastolic blood pressure between 80 and 89. Now we're at hypertension stage one. Now we have to do something about it. Most likely the patient is going to need a medication regimen. If the blood pressure systolic is above 140 or diastolic blood pressure is above 90, we have hypertension stage two and then most likely the patient will need more than one medication and certainly also these lifestyle interventions. And if the blood pressure goes above 180 and or above 120 diastolic, it's called a hypertensive crisis. And so really what this tells us that the target needs to be less than 120 systolic and less than 80 diastolic because the spring trial over several years has shown and that pertains to patients with underlying health conditions such as diabetes or other vascular problems. Overall the mortality rate or the cardiovascular events decreased if patients are within that target range which equals life saved. Also it decreased complications by 25% and these are complications such as kidney disease, heart disease, effects on the brain such as stroke and you can watch all the different complications in my video where I address hypertension as a as a disease process. And then overall if patients manage the blood pressure well with a target is below 120 over 80, it decreases death by 27%. So a quarter less patients died from complications or hypertension itself by just maintaining in this target range. So this is a very, very important study that really tells us the lower the blood pressure is the better it is because years ago the guidelines were or we wouldn't start treating patients until they got into that 140 range but now as the guidelines have been updated more research has been conducted really this target here needs to be achieved with every patient. And then the treatment for elevated blood pressure as you know are those decreased risk factors such as obesity, high sodium diet, diet choices overall being having a sedentary lifestyle, smoking alcohol and so forth. So these lifestyle changes always need to be number one and then for number two we have certain types of medications that the patient can be treated with different classes of medications and I also have videos about most of those classes of medications in my pharmacology playlist if you're interested in looking at those. So in summary the guidelines are always something that can be updated these are the guidelines as of January 2022. Research is always evolving we're always having more clinical trials to always try and better the outcome of patients and prevent them from suffering long-term complications from hypertension. So thanks so much for watching this video on nursing school explained please give me a thumbs up or subscribe to the channel. Also watch the other videos in the cardiovascular playlist and the pharmacology playlist and I'll see you soon right here on nursing school explained thanks for watching.