A veterinarian discusses his lecture on hypertension

In an interview with dvm360, Mark J. Acierno, DVM, MBA, DACVIM, professor and associate dean at Midwestern University in Arizona, talked about the lecture he presented at the Fetch dvm360 conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey: “Hypertension. New Guidelines, New Drugs, and What's Really in the New ACVIM Consensus Statement?” During the interview, Acierno outlined what his lecture focused on, which included a talk about idiopathic hypertension vs secondary hypertension, diseases associated with hypertension, and strategies for measuring blood pressure.

Below is the interview transcript

Mark J. Acierno, DVM, MBA, DACVIM: In this talk, basically, first, I provide a differentiation between primary—or what's now called idiopathic hypertension—and secondary. Idiopathic is what most people have. Secondary is what most of our canine, feline patients have.

Then we go on and define what diseases are generally associated with hypertension, so that we can better focus our attention on those particular patients because, honestly, most of us don't have time in our practice to measure blood pressure in every patient, but if we know, for example, a patient has Cushing's disease, it should ring a bell that we probably should check its blood pressure, because it could be hypertensive.

We go on and we talk about how to measure blood pressure and some best practices for it, and then we talk about not only medications, but really the pathways by which those medications work so we have a better understanding of how our therapy is affecting the patient's regulatory systems for blood pressure.