In August 2019, the National Institute for health and Care Excellence (Nice) published new national guidance for the management of blood pressure in adults.
It may be useful to print this summary as a resource for your pharmacy team – PDF available here.
What’s new?
This update sees the biggest change to the guideline since it was first published in 2011 – namely reducing the level of a person’s CVD risk at which treatment for high blood pressure can be started.
Nice now recommends that blood pressure-lowering drugs should be offered to people aged under 80 with a diagnosis of stage 1 hypertension who have a 10% or greater risk of developing CVD within the next 10 years. This is in contrast to the 20%
