Sources
Every published number on this site carries a source and a date, next to the number rather than buried in a footnote. This page collects them, and says plainly which ones were read from the original document and which were not.
The classification table
Table version 1.0.0. All four rows come from one document:
2025 AHA/ACC Guideline for the Prevention, Detection, Evaluation and Management of High Blood Pressure in Adults
Published 2025-08-14. Last checked 2026-08-03.
| Category | Threshold as published | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | Less than 120 systolic and less than 80 diastolic | 2026-08-03 |
| Elevated | 120 to 129 systolic and less than 80 diastolic | 2026-08-03 |
| Stage 1 hypertension | 130 to 139 systolic or 80 to 89 diastolic | 2026-08-03 |
| Stage 2 hypertension | 140 or higher systolic or 90 or higher diastolic | 2026-08-03 |
These four thresholds are unchanged from the 2017 guideline they replaced. The categories did not move; the citation did.
The higher-reading line
The line shown for readings above 180/120 mm Hg comes from the same guideline, which uses greater than rather than greater than or equal to. A reading of exactly 180/120 mm Hg therefore does not trigger it. Checked 2026-08-03.
What was verified directly, and what was not
The thresholds and quotations above were taken from the American Heart Association’s own published summary of its guideline and corroborated against independent renderings of the same document. The journals’ full-text pages block automated access, so they were not read directly during the build. That is near-primary sourcing, and saying so is more useful than implying otherwise.
Nothing on this site depends on a figure that could not be traced to a named document with a date. Where a number could not be sourced, it is not published.
The formulas
Pulse pressure and mean arterial pressure are standard textbook arithmetic rather than findings from a particular paper, and both are stated in full on the methodology page so you can check the output by hand. The mean arterial pressure figure is an estimate from a formula, and that page explains what the estimate assumes.