Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Perspective
  • Published:

Time in therapeutic range: timely in hypertension therapeutics?

Abstract

Elevated blood pressure ranks among the most important modifiable risk factors for premature death, and disability from hypertension mediated organ damage in the world. Many studies attest to the value of lifestyle adjustments and pharmacologic therapy in improving outcomes in patients with hypertension. Since blood pressure is a dynamic vitals sign, variability in visit-to-visit measurements is expected. While guidelines recommend a goal blood pressure, increasing attention is centered on how often a patient’s blood pressure is found to be not only below the recommended goal value, but also how much of the time the blood pressure is below what is considered a safe lower goal threshold for blood pressure. In this Perspective we review a relatively new technique in addressing adequacy of blood pressure treatment, the time in therapeutic range, and provide examples supporting the clinical relevance of this novel metric.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Depicts two ways of considering TTR in the office setting.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Ostchega Y, Fryar CD, Nwankwo T, Nguyen DT. Hypertension prevalence among adults aged 18 and over: United States, 2017-2018. NCHS Data Brief. 2020;364:1–8.

  2. Whelton PK, Carey RM, Aronow WS, Casey DE Jr., Collins KJ, Dennison Himmelfarb C, et al. 2017 ACC/AHA/AAPA/ABC/ACPM/AGS/APhA/ASH/ASPC/NMA/PCNA guideline for the prevention, detection, evaluation, and management of high blood pressure in adults: a report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Clinical Practice Guidelines. Hypertension. 2018;71:e13–115.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Fatani N, Dixon DL, Van Tassell BW, Fanikos J, Buckley LF. Systolic blood pressure time in target range and cardiovascular outcomes in patients with hypertension. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2021;77:1290–9.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  4. Collaborators GBDCoD. Global, regional, and national age-sex specific mortality for 264 causes of death, 1980-2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. Lancet. 2017;390:1151–210.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Mogi M, Maruhashi T, Higashi Y, Masuda T, Nagata D, Nagai M, et al. Update on hypertension research in 2021. Hypertens Res. 2022;45:1276–97.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  6. Kodani E, Inoue H, Atarashi H, Okumura K, Suzuki S, Yamashita T, et al. Impact of systolic blood pressure time in target range on adverse events in patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (from the J-RHYTHM Registry). Am J Cardiol. 2022;180:52–8.

  7. Chen K, Li C, Cornelius V, Yu D, Wang Q, Shi R, et al. Prognostic value of time in blood pressure target range among patients with heart failure. JACC Heart Fail. 2022;10:369–79.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Bakris G, Sternlicht H. Time in therapeutic range: redefining “optimal” blood pressure control. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2021;77:1300–1.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Reiffel JA. Time in the therapeutic range (TTR): an overly simplified conundrum. J Innov Card Rhythm Manag. 2017;8:2643–6.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  10. Ng DL, Malik N, Chai CS, Goh GM, Tan SB, Bee PC, et al. Time in therapeutic range, quality of life and treatment satisfaction of patients on long-term warfarin for non-valvular atrial fibrillation: a cross-sectional study. Health Qual Life Outcomes. 2020;18:347.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  11. Gateman D, Trojnar ME, Agarwal G. Time in therapeutic range: Warfarin anticoagulation for atrial fibrillation in a community-based practice. Can Fam Physician. 2017;63:e425–31.

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  12. Huang R, Lin Y, Liu M, Xiong Z, Zhang S, Zhong X, et al. Time in target range for systolic blood pressure and cardiovascular outcomes in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. J Am Heart Assoc. 2022;11:e022765.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  13. Julius S, Kjeldsen SE, Weber M, Brunner HR, Ekman S, Hansson L, et al. Outcomes in hypertensive patients at high cardiovascular risk treated with regimens based on valsartan or amlodipine: the VALUE randomised trial. Lancet. 2004;363:2022–31.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  14. Mancia G, Kjeldsen SE, Zappe DH, Holzhauer B, Hua TA, Zanchetti A, et al. Cardiovascular outcomes at different on-treatment blood pressures in the hypertensive patients of the VALUE trial. Eur Heart J. 2016;37:955–64.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. Wright JT Jr., Williamson JD, Whelton PK, Snyder JK, Sink KM, Rocco MV, et al. A randomized trial of intensive versus standard blood-pressure control. N Engl J Med. 2015;373:2103–16.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  16. Cruickshank JM. Coronary flow reserve and the J curve relation between diastolic blood pressure and myocardial infarction. BMJ. 1988;297:1227–30.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  17. Doumas M, Tsioufis C, Fletcher R, Amdur R, Faselis C, Papademetriou V. Time in therapeutic range, as a determinant of all-cause mortality in patients with hypertension. J Am Heart Assoc. 2017;6:e007131.

  18. Lloyd-Jones DM. Cumulative blood pressure measurement for cardiovascular disease prediction: promise and pitfalls. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2022;80:1156–8.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

NN wrote the Introduction and Abstract, and edited the rest of the manuscript. RRT wrote the sections on hypertension studies using the TTR and the Summary, supplied and drew the figure from his practice, and undertook final edits on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Raymond R. Townsend.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Nagarajan, N., Townsend, R.R. Time in therapeutic range: timely in hypertension therapeutics?. J Hum Hypertens 37, 244–247 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41371-022-00800-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41371-022-00800-y

Search

Quick links