Large arteries in hypertension. Pharmacological and therapeutic aspects.

The blood pressure curve may be divided into two components: mean arterial pressure, the steady component, and pulse pressure, the pulsatile component. Whereas pharmacological interventions in hypertension have been focused mainly on mean arterial pressure, little has been done to reduce selectively pulse pressure. However, increased pulse pressure with nearly normal mean arterial pressure is the classical hallmark of systolic hypertension in the elderly and a strong independent predictor of cardiac mortality, mainly for myocardial infarction. In this report, after the analysis of the factors influencing pulse pressure, a review of the pharmacological agents susceptible to reduce this hemodynamic factor is performed.