Prognostic Value of Systolic and Diastolic Blood Pressure in Treated Hypertensive Men

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Abstract
THE SIXTH Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure1 and the recent report of the World Health Organization/International Society of Hypertension2 classified blood pressure (BP) into stages based on either systolic (SBP) or diastolic (DBP) levels. Both classifications define the lowest SBP and DBP levels as being optimal, and the highest levels of both as having the highest cardiovascular morbidity and mortality rates. In the past few years, the importance of SBP has been emphasized, especially in older subjects,3,4 and more recently, it has been proposed that DBP values could be the best predictor of cardiovascular risk in younger subjects5 and SBP or pulse pressure in older subjects.