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Samuel Vaisrub, MD

JAMA. 1981;245(12):1250.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

As contrasted with diabetes, in which lability is a serious liability, lability in hypertension is generally viewed as a mitigating factor. Labile hypertension has long been regarded either as a relatively benign manifestation of an exaggerated response to stress or, at worst, as a possible prelude to "fixed" hypertension. Most clinicians thus tend to disregard a single casual elevated blood pressure (BP) reading in favor of a normal basal pressure obtained when the patient is relaxed. Similarly, most epidemiologists exclude the labile variant from their studies on hypertension.

In their report on a 20-year biennial follow-up study of a Framingham cohort of 5,209 men and women, Kannel et al¹ cast serious doubts on the innocuousness of labile hypertension. Indeed, they challenge the concept of labile hypertension as a separate entity. In their study, nearly all patients with hypertension demonstrated lability; in fact, the more severe the hypertension, the greater . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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