Blood pressure management in acute stroke: does the Scandinavian Candesartan Acute Stroke Trial (SCAST) resolve all of the unanswered questions?

摘要

Whether raised blood pressure in patients with acute stroke should be treated is one of the major unresolved issues in acute stroke management, due mainly to a paucity of reliable data from sufficiently powered randomized controlled trials. However, the Scandinavian Candesartan Acute Stroke Trial (SCAST), recently published in The Lancet, adds important new information about the risks and benefits of treatment of poststroke hypertension.1 Else Sandset and colleagues assessed whether careful blood pressure-lowering treatment with candesartan is beneficial in a wide range of patients with acute ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke and raised blood pressure.