Overall, the average blood pressure decreased. The control group went from an average of 128/77 to about 125/76, while the counseled group went from 131/77 to 126/75. Mattke said that people with a risk of heart disease should be in the “green zone” of under 130/80.

Nolan said even though these changes may look small, blood pressure tends to rise with age and “anything we can do to change that rate of increase is important for prevention purposes.”

However, said Mattke, the paper only talks about average blood pressures and does not talk about blood pressure in individual people.

“We don’t quite know how many people are up and how many people are below,” he said. “If the change is in the people that were below the green zone anyway, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a question of who went from an unsafe a value to a safe value,” he said.

The study continued for only four months after the phone sessions ended, which doesn’t say whether the counseling sessions work long-term, Mattke said. Both he and Nolan agreed that longer studies are needed to see if phone counseling sessions really help in the long run. Also, Mattke says that an in-depth look at the costs is needed as well.

“You have to look at baseline risk of the population you are addressing,” he said. “If it’s not very high, then it’s hard to make these work financially.”

SOURCE: The American Journal of Cardiology, online January 6, 2011.