A change in what constitutes high blood pressure has led to a startling statistic: nearly half of all adults in the U.S. have some type of cardiovascular disease (CVD).
The 2017 American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology hypertension guidelines updated the definition of high blood pressure as a reading of 130/80 mm Hg, from the previous definition of 140/90 mm Hg. That revision translated into 48 percent of the adult population in the U.S. – or some 121.5 million people – having CVD, according to the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Heart and Stroke Statistics — 2019 Update, published in the Association’s journal Circulation. That’s a significant increase in previous years.