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How Dangerous Is Orthostatic Hypotension & Life Expectancy Of Someone With It?

Orthostatic hypotension refers to low blood pressure. Blood of a person pushes against the arteries with each of the heartbeats. Doctors refer to the action of pushing the blood against the walls of the artery as blood pressure. In most cases, doctors consider low blood pressure as good for people i.e. within 120 mm and 80 mm of systolic and diastolic blood pressure. However, low blood pressure may sometimes force you to feel dizzy or tired. In such situations, hypotension may be a sign of any underlying condition, which one should treat immediately.

How Dangerous Is Orthostatic Hypotension?

How Dangerous Is Orthostatic Hypotension?

Whether orthostatic hypotension is dangerous or not depends on certain health issues, which you experience, which include the following-

  • You get out of your bed or rising from a chair and feel lightheadedness or dizziness unexpectedly.
  • Your vision becomes blur or dim or you may experience tunnel vision.
  • You may have dizziness and confusion while having dull pain across the back area of your neck and shoulders.
  • In rare cases, you may become faint or lose consciousness.

Any episode related to hypotension ends up very quickly and once you lie or sit down, your symptoms disappear. A prime risk related to many people suffering from orthostatic hypotension is fall followed by injury. Other than this, if a person has recurrent or chronic orthostatic hypotension, it includes a severe underlying condition.

Danger Of Orthostatic Hypotension Based On Gravity

When you lie down, your blood distributes evenly in your entire body. When you stand up, the gravity of the earth forces pooling the blood in legs. Under normal conditions, blood vessels in your lower body constrict whenever you stand up to cause vasoconstriction.

Here, vasoconstriction refers to the condition, which avoids excessive dropping of the blood pressure as we change our position. If the compensation fails to take place strongly or rapidly, the flow of blood to the brain reduces and starves of oxygen. The brain is highly sensitive towards low levels of oxygen and hence, it leads to severe symptoms, including the problem of dizziness.(4)

Life Expectancy Of Someone With Orthostatic Hypotension

The total prevalence of the disease of orthostatic hypotension is about 6.9percent and it consistently increases with age. If you have a look at the statistics of last 4years, you will find 473 deaths, among which 52 died from a severe form of orthostatic hypotension. Along with this, if you check the four years of mortality rates, you will find about 38.6% people from 1000 years died from orthostatic hypotension. Moreover, doctors have found a significant linear relationship between the variations in systolic blood pressure from the standing position to supine position of a person and 4-year rates of mortality.(5)

Blood pressure is measurable whenever your heart beats and when the heartbeat rests. The measurement of the blood pumping through the arteries at the time of when ventricles of your heart squeeze refer to systole or systolic pressure. The measurement of the rest period implies diastole or diastolic pressure.

Systole supplies blood to your body and diastole supplies the heart with blood filled with coronary arteries. Blood pressure is denoted as the systolic number over diastolic number. Accordingly, if a person suffers from hypotension, his/her blood pressure would be 90/60 and even low than the mentioned values.(1)(2)

Symptoms Of Orthostatic Hypotension

People suffering from orthostatic hypotension or hypotension experience various symptoms because of their drop in blood pressure from 90/60. These symptoms include the following-

Symptoms may reach to severity to its mild form. A few of the people may find slightly uncomfortable in dealing with symptoms, while others often feel ill.(3)

References:

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Team PainAssist
Team PainAssist
Written, Edited or Reviewed By: Team PainAssist, Pain Assist Inc. This article does not provide medical advice. See disclaimer
Last Modified On:August 3, 2022

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