Word: patiently
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...produce undesirable side effects, such as impotence, dizziness and drowsiness. Doctors have learned to lessen these reactions by adjusting dosages or switching from one drug to another. Another problem was less easy to solve. Doctors had known for years that there are many forms of hypertension that affect different patients in a vast variety of ways. Some respond to one kind of treatment, others to something completely different. It remained for Dr. Laragh to show how to predict an individual patient's response to a particular drug...
...discovered by Dr. Edward Freis, a researcher with the Veterans Administration. He had noted from test reports that large doses of an antimalarial drug called pentaquine dramatically lowered the blood pressures of normal men. Figuring that it might do the same for hypertensives, Freis administered it to a patient with severely elevated blood pressure. It worked, and although the patient eventually died of kidney failure (the organ had been badly damaged by his hypertension), his case demonstrated the practicality of drug treatment...
Laragh's discoveries, which won him a share in the $50,000 Stouffer Prize in 1969, explained the hormonal controls of blood pressure for the first time. They also permitted the development of a renin profile-a computer-aided analysis of the patient's hormonal output. There are patients with low renin levels who nonetheless have high blood pressure; excess of fluid is probably at the root of their problem. Diuretics counteract this tendency to store salt and fluids, thus lowering the blood pressure. Those with high renin levels can be best helped with renin inhibitors that will...
...lulled into a sense of false security by a lack of symptoms, drop out of treatment programs. Such lapses can be lethal. Dr. Freis once treated a young, dangerously hypertensive law student by putting him on diuretics but could not induce him to continue with the medication. The patient died of a stroke at 29. Other dropouts have been more fortunate. Helga Brown, 46, of San Francisco, followed her doctor's orders carefully for a year after a faulting episode revealed that she had high blood pressure; then she dropped both the drugs and her diet. She suffered...
...device used to measure blood pressure is called a sphygmomanometer (from the Greek, meaning pulse measurement); it measures the air pressure needed to raise a column of mercury. To use it, the doctor pumps air into a cloth cuff wound tightly round the patient's arm. As the cuff expands, the column of mercury rises in response to the increasing air pressure. That pressure also causes the cuff to press against the brachial artery, stopping the flow of blood. The doctor, his stethoscope pressed against the patient's forearm, knows that the flow has ceased when...