Hypertension Clinic

If you suffer from uncontrolled hypertension or your blood pressure is difficult to manage, our team of experts is here to help. We provide the most effective treatments, helping you manage your high blood pressure and reduce your risk for heart disease and stroke. 

Why Choose Us for Hypertension Care

• Comprehensive and combined specialty care: We use a multispecialty approach to understand and manage your difficult to treat hypertension, its complications, and possible secondary causes. Through a comprehensive diagnostic workup, we may encounter other conditions (known as comorbidities) for which we can help you get the specialty referrals and care you need.  
• Personalized care: You receive effective, individualized treatment based on current research in hypertension.
• Support for high-risk patients: We set you up with ongoing treatment resources and frequent follow ups if you have high-risk or difficult to manage conditions. Some such conditions include resistant and secondary hypertension, white coat hypertension, hypertension with low blood pressure episodes, or autonomic dysfunction such as POTS.

Conditions We Treat

We help patients who struggle with hypertension (high blood pressure). We also specialize in care for patients with frequent episodes of hypotension (low blood pressure). Specific types of hypertension we treat include: 

• Labile hypertension, or blood pressure that rises and drops significantly and suddenly
• White coat hypertension, or blood pressure that’s elevated in the clinic but remains normal otherwise
• Masked hypertension, or blood pressure that remains normal in the clinic but elevates out of the clinic
• Resistant hypertension, or high blood pressure that does not respond well to aggressive medical treatment

What to Expect

As our patient, you’ll receive a treatment plan tailored to your unique needs. Treatment includes not only medical therapy, but also coordinated care from other specialties and clinics to help improve your sleep, lifestyle choices, and nutrition.

Our team of experts include:

• Dr. Giv Heidari-Bateni, non-invasive cardiologist
• Stephanie Manzo, hypertension clinic coordinator 

At our clinic, you also have the opportunity to participate in research, such as clinical trials and observational studies. These can offer the opportunity to receive potential new treatments and help improve care for patients with hypertension everywhere.

Your First Visit

We’ll start with a comprehensive evaluation to better understand your history of hypertension disease. This includes:

• Going over past medical history, medication history, and lifestyle habits
• Looking into the blood pressure monitor device you use to make sure that device is calibrated and functioning
• Reviewing other risk factors

Many patients with resistant hypertension have a secondary cause for hypertension, such as disease of the renal/adrenal glands or elevated cortisol levels. We may order laboratory and imaging studies and work with other specialties to identify whether your hypertension has secondary causes, which can be factored into your treatment plan.

Diagnosis

Our clinic has the ability to perform a wide range of diagnostic evaluations and interventions, which help us develop your personalized treatment plan. You may need common diagnostics such as electrocardiogram, echocardiography, 24-hour blood pressure monitoring, and blood work. Other tests and procedures we perform include:

• Renal ultrasound including Doppler ultrasound of renal artery, a technique used to produce images of structures inside the body
• Renal artery angiography with or without angioplasty, an assessment for the presence of renal artery blockage using a special dye (contrast), with possible stent placement 
• Adrenal vein sampling, where blood samples are taken from the adrenal gland to assess for certain hormonal levels
• CT or MR angiography, where a special dye is injected in the body and then imaged
• Sleep lab, or sleep study, which can help diagnose a wide range of sleep disorders

Follow-Up

Hypertension is a chronic condition that usually requires ongoing care to manage. Your treatment plan will include regular visits to help you get the care you need and make helpful changes to your lifestyle. We’ll help you understand what you can do outside of your visits for better heart health, including diet and physical exercise. We’ll also connect you with the specialty care you need outside of our clinic, such as a “health coaching” program, lifestyle medicine, or endocrinology.

Take the Next Step

If you have difficulty controlling your blood pressure, we can help you manage it. Call us at 800-INTL-HEART (800-468-5432) to schedule an appointment at the Loma Linda University Hypertension clinic (or ask your primary care provider for a referral).