AVS for millions?
Compounding the challenge is the other bit of bombshell news recently dropped on the endocrinology and hypertension communities: PA may be much more prevalent that previously suspected, occurring in roughly 20% of patients with hypertension, according to study results that also came out in 2020 (Ann Int Med. 2020 Jul 7;173[1]:10-20).
The upshot, according to Dr. Feldman and others, is that researchers will need to find reliable criteria besides imaging for identifying PA patients with an increased likelihood of having a lateralized source for their excess aldosterone production. That’s “the only hope,” said Dr. Feldman, “so we won’t have to do AVS on 20 million Americans.”
Unfortunately, the path toward a successful screen to winnow down candidates for AVS has been long and not especially fruitful, with efforts dating back at least 50 years, and with one of the most recent efforts at stratifying PA patients by certain laboratory measures getting dismissed as producing a benefit that “might not be substantial,” wrote Michael Stowasser, MBBS, in a published commentary (J Hypertension. 2020 Jul;38[7]:1259-61).
In contrast to Dr. Feldman, Dr. Stowasser was more optimistic about the prospects for avoiding an immediate crisis in AVS assessment of PA patients, mostly because so few patients with PA are now identified by clinicians. Given the poor record clinicians have historically rung up diagnosing PA, “it would seem unlikely that we are going to be flooded with AVS requests any time soon,” he wrote. There is also reason to hope that increased demand for AVS will help broaden availability, and innovative testing methods promise to speed up the procedure, said Dr. Stowasser, a professor of medicine at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia and director of the Endocrine Hypertension Research Centre at Greenslopes and Princess Alexandra Hospitals in Brisbane, in an interview.
But regardless of whether AVS testing becomes more available or streamlined, recent events suggest there will be little way to avoid eventually having to run millions of these diagnostic procedures.
Patients with PA “who decide they will not want surgery do not need AVS. For all other patients with PA, you need AVS. The medical system will just have to respond,” Dr. Carey concluded.
Dr. Carey, Dr. Yang, Dr. Feldman, and Dr. Stowasser had no relevant disclosures.