Surgeons hail short, pill-free procedure as breakthrough

A team of surgeons performed the life-saving procedure on an Australian woman with dramatic results.

The patient, Gael Lander, 66, was described as "a walking time-bomb" by doctors but now has a relatively normal blood pressure.

Experts have hailed the 45-minute operation as a radical breakthrough in combating hypertension.

The one-off treatment disables nerves linked to blood pressure regulation and is carried out under local anaesthetic.

The results were dramatic, resulting in a 20 per cent drop in blood pressure. It will bring hope to thousands of people with dangerously high blood pressure and those who do not respond well to medication. Researchers in Melbourne who pioneered the operation said it would save many lives.

Markus Schlaich, who co-authored the research, said the breakthrough was "one of the greatest achievements in the last 20 years within the area of resistant hypertension".

He said it would also help patients resist stroke and heart attacks and also lower diabetes levels.

He said: "It's been demonstrated to be a very safe, short and very effective procedure. We are quite convinced that it will be a part of medical practice in the relatively near future."

Ms Lander, whose parents also suffered from hypertension, had the procedure two years ago but the findings have only just been published in the Lancet medical journal.

She said: "Everything seemed to race - my heart, everything. People would say to me 'relax' and I would say, 'I'm relaxed, I'm relaxed'. But how do you relax if you feel like everything is on fast-forward. Being the first, it wasn't quite known what was going to happen. But almost immediately I felt different and when readings were taken, it showed that the blood pressure was being lowered."

Up to two in five people in western countries are estimated to suffer from high blood pressure. This is triggered both by genetics and lifestyle factors including diet, salt and alcohol consumption and lack of exercise. But about 15 per cent of sufferers are resistant to normal medication.

Patients in the Australian study were typically taking about five drugs but some still had blood pressure readings higher than 230.