It is very interesting that a lot of people don't know that blocking the arteries of the kidney can be a cause for hypertension. Particularly someone who is young and becomes hypertensive suddenly, one should make sure there is no blockage in the renal arteries. There are millions of people with hypertension, so it's easy to think that we should simply give them medications. But it's important to understand that there is a very small segment of the population, who develop hypertension at a young age, particularly in their twenties, thirties, forties. They need to be looked into. All we need to do is a scan of their kidneys. What is called a duplex scan or an ultrasound of their arteries. With this methodology we can actually pick up a narrowing of the arteries.

What happens if the arteries to the kidneys are narrowed or blocked, the kidney produces a substance in response that causes blood pressure to increase enormously. If you can open up the kidney artery by angioplasty or stenting we can cure them. Not everyone can be cured but at least in a lot of people we can reduce the number of medications they are on. Not treating them is very dangerous. Because in these young people continued hypertension of very high degree, blood pressure in the 180, 190 range is dangerous. They can end up having bleeding in the brain, they can develop heart disease, other arterial blockages, So it is very important to recognize it. People don't realize that this is a correctable cause of hypertension. Normally hypertension is not curable, you can only control it. But this is one of the correctable causes. The clue that at least in a young person who develops hypertension rapidly, this should be looked into. The test is very simple and we can do that now.

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