BOSTON – One out of every two adults will develop high blood pressure, which can lead to a host of problems including heart disease, stroke, and blindness.
Many patients either can’t or won’t take medication, but a new surgical procedure could treat help hypertension for life.
When 69-year-old David Leifer was diagnosed with hypertension eight years ago, his doctor told him to change his lifestyle.
“I tried to reduce the salt, the sodium, in my diet and tried to exercise and it didn’t really make any difference,” he said.
The next step? A pill, but his blood pressure still didn’t budge.
Three-quarters of people with high blood pressure don’t have it under control. Many don’t know they have it in the first place and others don’t want to take pills. David was one of them.
So Leifer enrolled in a clinical trial investigating whether a surgical procedure called ultrasound renal denervation could safely and effectively treat hypertension.