Blood pressure in tenth-grade students: results from the Chicago Heart Association Pediatric Heart Screening Project

Abstract

This report is based on 13,231 tenth-grade students who participated in the Chicago Heart Association Pediatric Heart Screening Project. The blood pressures of these fifteen and sixteen-year-olds were analyzed with respect to sex, race, adiposity, pulse rate, and father's educational attainment. The mean systolic blood pressure was higher in boys than girls by nearly 5 mm Hg, but mean diastolic blood pressure was lower by less than 1 mm Hg. Black tenth-graders had higher mean diastolic blood pressure than whites; the difference in systolic blood pressure was not statistically significant. Adiposity and resting pulse rate were positively correlated with systolic blood pressure and, to a lesser degree, with diastolic blood pressure. After taking adiposity and pulse rate into account, father's educational attainment had a small but statistically significant negative association with diastolic blood pressure in white but not in black students. Nearly 5 percent of students were recalled for a second test because the initial screening blood pressures equaled or exceeded 150 mm Hg systolic or 90 mm Hg diastolic, and almost half of students at the recall examination continued to have pressures of 145/85 or greater.