‘Exciting Development’ For Britons With Resistant High Blood Pressure
There is new hope for millions of Britons whose high blood pressure does not respond to medication. Researchers at St Barts Hospital are testing a new technique being described as the “most exciting” development in the field.
All you need to know about uncontrolled hypertension
Michel Azizi, France, Mel Lobo, United Kingdom and Felix Mahfoud, Germany, talk to Atul Pathak, France, about the current state of the renal denervation field and its future.
Michel Azizi explains and comments on the major results of the DENER-HTN study he just had published in The Lancet. This landmark trial in the field shows that renal denervation, done in a very controlled way with very strict methodologies, is able to bring added value to a very specific population in terms of blood pressure reduction.
Mel Lobo discusses his paper published in The Lancet, showing beneficial effects of a new approach and opening the part for personalisation of therapy according to the phenotype of the patient.
Lastly, Felix Mahfoud discusses the clinical consensus paper from the European Heart Journal meant as a guidance for the field and for future investigations.
New Investigations & Treatments
Since 2010 the world of blood pressure medicine has been fortunate to see the arrival of several new and highly promising approaches to help patients for whom medications have not succeeded in bringing their BP under control. As Director of the Barts BP Clinic, Dr Lobo has been at the forefront of novel therapeutic developments in his field and is currently involved as a principal investigator in several multinational trials of hypertension technologies. Some of these are listed below:
- Renal Denervation
- Co-Chief Investigator Global Paradise Registry (Ultrasound Renal denervation)
- UK Principal Investigator of Target BP Study programme study ( Ablative Solutions)
- Principal Investigator Wave IV study (Kona Medical)
- Carotid sinus stimulation
- Dr Lobo is working as a Specialist adviser to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to investigate adoption of this therapy in the UK for NHS Patients.
- Prof Lobo is working with several companies to help develop novel methods of cuffless BP measurement – watch this space!
It is important to emphasise that device therapy of hypertension remains experimental and at present Dr Lobo is only offering these treatments to patients in the framework of clinical trials.