Neurogenic mechanisms are important in the maintenance of most forms of hypertension,
yet the brain is highly vulnerable to the deleterious effects of elevated blood pressure.
Hypertensive encephalopathy results from a sudden, sustained rise in blood pressure
sufficient to exceed the upper limit of cerebral blood flow autoregulation. The cerebral
circulation adapts to chronic less severe hypertension but at the expense of changes that
predispose to stroke due to arterial occlusion or rupture. Strokeis a generic term for a clinical …