QualityHealth - "Secondary Hypertension: Get the Facts"
If you've been diagnosed with hypertension, or high blood pressure, it actually may be caused by an underlying medical condition.
In this case, it's known as secondary hypertension. Is secondary hypertension any more dangerous than primary hypertension? It can be. "Often patients with secondary hypertension have very high blood pressure, so for this reason it is often more dangerous," explains Nicholas DuBois, MD, MS, a cardiologist at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. "In addition, the underlying cause of the secondary hypertension can sometimes damage other organs." Kidney problems, for example, are a common cause of secondary hypertension, and "problems of blood flow to the kidneys affect blood pressure but can also lead to kidney damage, complicating the situation." Other causes of secondary hypertension include problems with the heart, arteries, and endocrine system, as well as a host of other rarer conditions.
- Nicholas DuBois, MD, Associate Professor of Cardiology, The Mount Sinai Medical Center