I had an astoundingly high blood pressure reading last year when I tore my bicep the day after the election and dragged myself to the ER. The staff freaked. I was like, "I had a normal reading two weeks ago in my doctor's office and I'm really in an awful lot of pain and worry right now". But it still earned me the "oh shit hypertension you must do extra pre-surgical clearance".
It was kind of interesting watching my blood pressure tick down back to normal over the course of about 4 days though.
I guess the lesson is don't rip your bicep off, it will transiently elevate your BP. ;)
If they’re doing surgery it doesn’t matter why you have hypertension, or how temporary it is. The high blood pressure causes complications for the surgery itself.
That makes intuitive sense, if blood is under higher pressure they're going to need to work harder to prevent you from losing too much blood I would imagine.
Basically, yeah, that’s one of the concerns. Drug dosages and other things are affected too, but the most simple concern is “if we accidentally hit something and you start bleeding, above a certain blood pressure it won’t stop.”
Edit: Well, it will stop bleeding… once you lose enough blood.
It was kind of interesting watching my blood pressure tick down back to normal over the course of about 4 days though.
I guess the lesson is don't rip your bicep off, it will transiently elevate your BP. ;)