Hypertension and Renal Failure

We read with great interest the article by Kannel et al.1 on the value of the systolic blood pressure as a means of differentiating potential myocardial hypertrophy and congestive heart failure and of correlating with heart weight at autopsy. A few years ago, we derived a discriminant equation that included the initial systolic blood pressure as a clinical variable for predicting which patients with primary hypertension would ultimately die of renal failure.2 The renal-failure group had significantly greater mean initial systolic blood pressure and significantly greater mean heart weight and significantly smaller mean kidney weight at autopsy.