10.1177/0897190005278748RYNN ET ALDRUG THERAPY FOR HYPERTENSIVE URGENCY/EMERGENCY An Emergency Department Approach to Drug Treatment of Hypertensive Urgency and Emergency

Patients who present with hypertensive urgency or emer-gency require immediate attention to assess the severity of ill-ness. Guidelines from the Joint National Committee on Pre-vention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure are available but do little to address the manage-ment of acute elevations in bloodpressure. Various treatment options, both old and new, exist to manage these patients in the emergency department. Decisions on therapy are patient specific and depend on the underlying cause of elevated blood pressure. This article sets out to describe specific pa-tient presentations and reviews current available options in themanagementofhypertensiveurgencies andemergencies. KEY WORDS: Antihypertensive agents, drug therapy, emergencies, emergency medicine, emergency treatment, hypertension. HYPERTENSION IS A COMMON DISORDER af-fecting at least 65 million Americans and approx-imately 1 billion individuals worldwide.1-3 The Sev-enth Report of the Joint National Committee on th