High blood pressure in children not being diagnosed

According to a study by researchers in the United States, children and adolescents with high blood pressure are not being diagnosed.

It is estimated that about 2%-5% of children/adolescents suffer from hypertension but experts believe figures will rise.

The researchers say the growing problem is linked to increasing levels of juvenile obesity.

Experts say undiagnosed hypertension (high blood pressure) can surreptitiously damage major organs, especially the kidneys and can be an indication of other diseases in children, such as endocrine disorders, kidney or heart disease.

The researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland became concerned after an examination of 14,187 young people ages 3 to 18 revealed 507 cases of hypertension, 376 of which had not been diagnosed, despite at least three previous medical checkups.

Dr. Matthew Hansen and colleagues found that an estimated 3.6 percent of the children had high blood pressure, within the range found in other studies.

They suggest that electronic medical record keeping should be upgraded to better diagnose the problem by comparing the findings of earlier checkups; juvenile hypertension is difficult to confirm because it varies by sex, height and weight.

The researchers say identifying elevated blood pressure in children is important because if it is not identified by a child's doctor, it may be years before the abnormal blood pressure is detected, leading to end-organ damage.

The researchers say electronic medical records can be programmed to automatically "review current and prior blood pressures, ages, heights, and sex to determine if abnormal blood pressure criteria had been met."

The study is published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).