"Upon examining the man, the doctors described him as fit and healthy. He didn't smoke, drink, or use any drugs. His blood work was all completely normal. His cholesterol, blood sugar levels, markers for kidney and liver function-everything from routine tests came back normal. Specialized tests for things like autoimmune and clotting disorders were also negative. Heart tests found no problems. Urine tests and abdominal scans found no problems with his other organs."
"His blood pressure was astonishingly high, at 254/150 mm Hg. For context, a normal reading is under 120/80, while anything over 180/120 is considered a hypertensive crisis, which is a medical emergency. The man had suffered a mild stroke, and his extremely high blood pressure was an obvious factor. But why his blood pressure had reached stratospheric heights was far less obvious to his doctors, according to the retrospective case report written by Martha Coyle and Sunil Munshi of Nottingham University Hospital."
A man in his 50s and otherwise healthy presented with sudden left-sided numbness and uncoordinated muscle movements (ataxia). His blood pressure measured 254/150 mm Hg, far above the hypertensive crisis threshold of 180/120. Imaging identified arterial spasms in the brain on CT and an infarct in the thalamus on MRI. Routine blood work, cholesterol, glucose, kidney and liver markers, autoimmune and clotting tests, cardiac testing, urine analysis, and abdominal scans were all normal. The arterial spasms were strongly linked to the extreme hypertension and coincided with ischemic injury in a central brain relay structure.
Read at Ars Technica
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]