Is High Blood Pressure Considered Heart Disease?

Blood pressure is the measurement of the force of your blood pressing against the walls of your arteries. When your blood pressure increases, your heart has to work harder to pump blood through your circulatory system. High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is a condition in which your blood pressure measurements are consistently too high. While high blood pressure itself is not considered to be heart disease, it can cause heart disease or other serious cardiovascular issues and be a major risk factor for having a heart attack if left uncontrolled. High blood pressure often can be a condition that you don’t even know you have. That’s why it’s so important to know your numbers and monitor them on a regular basis. When it comes to measuring blood pressure, here’s what the numbers mean:

  • Systolic pressure (the top number) measures pressure in your arteries during heartbeats.
  • Diastolic pressure (the bottom number) measures pressure in your arteries between heartbeats.

Blood pressure categories include:

  • Normal: Less than 120/80 mm Hg
  • Elevated: Top number (systolic) between 120-129 and bottom number (diastolic) less than 80
  • Stage 1: Systolic between 130-139 or diastolic between 80-89
  • Stage 2: Systolic at least 140 or diastolic at least 90 mm Hg
  • Hypertensive crisis: Top number over 180 and/or bottom number over 120, with patients needing prompt changes in medication if there are no other symptoms, or immediate hospitalization if there are signs of organ damage

Aside from high blood pressure, many other factors could be increasing your risk for developing heart disease. Take our free heart health assessment to learn your heart’s real age and what you can do now to reduce your risk of developing heart disease in the future.

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Why Choose Us?

When you put your heart in our hands, you get the benefit of more than 30 years of experience in cardiac care, the commitment that brought the first open heart surgery to our communities and skills that can stop a heart attack in progress.

CPC accredited Chest Pain Center

Located on the campus of ShorePoint Health Port Charlotte, ShorePoint Heart Center is Charlotte County's largest heart center and the only accredited Chest Pain Center with Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) from the American College of Cardiology (ACC). Hospitals that earn this accreditation have proven exceptional competency in treating patients with heart attack symptoms and have primary PCI available 24/7 every day of the year.

ShorePoint Heart Center Features:

  • Private patient rooms
  • 10-bed cardiac intensive care unit
  • 9-bed cardiac-vascular surgery unit
  • 16-bed post-interventional cardiac unit
  • 8-bed pre/post-interventional cardiac holding unit
  • Two open heart surgery suites
  • Four cath labs, including a designated electrophysiology lab
  • Charlotte County's only hybrid operating room, a space which integrates a surgical operating room and an X-ray imaging system to enable clinicians to work more efficiently by reducing preparation and procedure time.

Our Services

Interventional cardiology: We offer a variety of catheter-assisted techniques to treat heart disease, including cardiac catheterization, atherectomy (rotoblater), balloon angioplasty and stenting.

Open heart surgery: When open heart surgery becomes the best treatment solution, our team performs procedures such as coronary artery bypass surgery, coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), congenital heart disease repair and valve repair and replacement.

Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR): ShorePoint Health performed the first TAVR procedure in Charlotte County on Friday, July 12, 2019. Since then, more than 200 patients have benefitted from this life saving, minimally-invasive procedure.

Heart rhythm disorder management and treatment: We provide arrhythmia treatment from lifestyle-modification assistance to complex surgical treatment, including ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF), implantable devices including cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) and pacemakers, and radiofrequency ablation. For patients with atrial fibrillation who are unable to continue long term anticoagulation therapy, we offer left atrial appendage closure. We performed our first procedure in 2018.

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