New staging system of the fifth joint national committee report on the detection, evaluation, and treatment of high blood pressure (JNC-V) alters assessment of the severity and treatment of hypertension

The fifth Joint National Committee report on the detection, evaluation, and treatment of high blood pressure (JNC-V) introduced a new system of blood pressure classification that incorporated systolic blood pressure (SEP) and established new diastolic blood pressure (DBP) cut points. With the previous JNC classification, subjects were classified according to DBP alone. In this study, our purpose was to assess the effect of the new staging system on the assessment of hypertension severity and to determine whether the new JNC-V staging system better identifies individuals at risk for hypertensive target-organ damage. We compared the assessment of hypertension severity using JNC-IV with that using JNC-V in 1158 subjects enrolled in the Harlem Hospital Hypertension Clinic database from 1975 to 1992. We used pretreatment DBP to classify subjects according to JNC-IV criteria. These subjects were reclassified into one of the four stages of JNC-V. The assessment of hypertension severity and prevalence of organ damage in subjects who remained in the same category of severity in both systems was compared with damage in subjects who were upstaged. With the JNC-V classification, 321 subjects remained in the same category, and 837 were upstaged. Six hundred and four subjects moved up because of the new cut points of DBP, and 275 were upstaged because of higher SEP. Upstaged subjects had more manifestations of hypertensive target-organ damage. With the new JNC-V classification system, hypertension is assessed as severe or very severe in more individuals than with JNC-IV. Subjects who are upstaged in JNC-V are more likely to have evidence of renal disease and other target-organ damage.