580-d-4. Cardiac and Pulmonic Pediatric Conditions.

Hypertension in Children
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Signs and Symptoms
Its clinical manifestations include failure to thrive and grow for infants. For older children, significant hypertension manifests as headaches, nausea, visual disturbances, epistasis, and seizures. It is often asymptomatic in children with secondary hypertension unless there is a continuous and rapid increase in blood pressure (Patel & Walker, 2016).
Pathophysiology
Children who have a strong family history of hypertension suffers from primary hypertension. However, other causes of it vary with age. Newborn hypertension is usually secondary to renal artery stenosis, congenital renal malformations, or coarctation of the aorta. Older children usually suffer from diseases that stimulate the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system or RAAS (Patel & Walker, 2016).
Epidemiology
The prevalence of clinically diagnosed hypertension in children ranges from 2-4%. Out of 22, 224 children ages 10-17 years-old in the University of Texas McGovern Medical School, 14.8% of children are already in the prehypertensive stage. This study also suggests that hypertension is more prevalent in shorter children less than 13 years old and taller children more than 13 years-old (Bell, Samuel, & Samuels, 2019).
Physical Examination Findings
The typical PE findings include childhood obesity as manifested by an increase in the body mass index (BMI) and high blood pressure. Flushing is evident in patients with severely high BP (Rao, 2016).
Differential Diagnoses
The differential diagnoses include those that affect the kidn...