As study by researchers at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit finds that an overwhelming percentage of African Americans with hypertension also are afflicted with heart disease, although in many cases there are no symptoms and the patients are unaware of their heart disease.
Patients who visited an emergency room at a Detroit hospital for non-heart-related reasons were selected for the study. Nearly 94 percent of the test subjects were African Americans. The participants in the study agreed to undergo echocardiograms. Of the patients who were found to have high blood pressure, more than 90 percent were found to have heart disease. A majority of these patients had diastolic dysfuntion, the heart’s inabiity to pump an adequate supply of blood.
