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Grethe S. Birketvedt, Mohammad A. Rafey, Ben Stein, Warren Ho, Tom Karson, Donald Smith, Stanley Tuhrim, Robert A. Phillips, P-174: Impact of the world trade center disaster on blood pressure level and depression in a primary care practice in a hospital in New York City, American Journal of Hypertension, Volume 15, Issue S3, April 2002, Page 92A, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0895-7061(02)02525-6
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Abstract
A large number of cross-sectional studies have assessed the relation between hypertension and various psychological factors and natural disasters. However, few studies have looked at the acute consequences of a man-made disaster on the blood pressure levels and incidence of depression in a primary care practice.
To estimate the consequences of the World Trade Center disaster on blood pressure and depression in patients attending a primary care practice few miles away from the World Trade Center site.
We reviewed the charts of all the patients visiting their primary care physician in a two week period before (Group 1) and after (Group 2) the Sept 11th disaster. We compared the mean blood pressure and recorded the patients diagnosed with depression in both groups. Depression was diagnosed clinically by physicians, based upon the patients complaints and medical history.
A total of 1080 patients visited the primary care center during these four weeks (556 in group 1, mean age=58.3, 524 in group 2, mean age =58.4). In Group I, 329 patients (82 men, 247 female) had their blood pressure measured (mean blood pressure = 132.6/78.1 mmHg). In Group II, 316 patients (79 men, 239 female) had their blood pressure recorded (mean blood pressure =131.6/76.1mmHg) after the WTC tragedy. In Group 1 there were 63 patients with (11 %) depression and in Group II, 72 patients (14%) were depressed.
We did not find any difference in the blood pressure levels in the patients visiting the primary care center after the WTC disaster. However, the percentage of patients visiting their primary care physicians who were found to be depressed increased by 30% after the WTC disaster.
Earlier studies have shown that disasters have an adverse impact on the blood pressure in patients directly involved. This was not the case in the present study, perhaps because the patients visiting our center were not immediately involved in the disaster. It has also been suggested that older adults are less reactive to stressful events (the maturation hypothesis) and our patients were older than those in previous reports. However, we found that there was a 30% increase in depressed patients visiting the primary care center. Although depression has been reported to be a contributing factor to high blood pressure, in this cross-sectional study, we found no evidence to support this link.
