CLINICAL CONTEXT: Seniors taking beta-blockers to their detriment?
Many elderly patients are on beta-blockers, perhaps to their detriment. Treatment choices for hypertension can have an enormous impact on outcomes among older patients:
Two thirds of US adults 60 years of age and older have hypertension, mostly isolated systolic hypertension.4,5
Multiple studies, including the Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly Program and the Systolic Hypertension in Europe, have shown that lowering blood pressure with pharmacologic interventions in older patients can reduce the risk of cardiovascular events and possibly dementia.6
Beta-blockers have been a mainstay of hypertension treatment for many decades and we suspect continue to be widely used as first-line therapy in patients for whom the evidence now indicates they are inferior.