Impact of rest on office blood pressure in patients with hypertension and diabetes at the national obesity centre of Yaounde: a cross-sectional study in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Background: Hypertension is the most important cardiovascular risk factor. Enhancing the accuracy of blood pressure (BP) measurement would be helpful for controlling hypertension. The importance of rest before measuring BP in the office is known, but the magnitude of the change in BP with the duration of rest is not known. We aim to evaluate the magnitude of the fall in BP after a prolonged rest in diabetic and hypertensive patients and identify the associated factors. Methods: We carried out a cross-sectional study between January and February 2016 at the National Obesity Centre of Yaounde. Were included all consenting patients with diabetes and hypertension, of both sexes, aged ≥18 years. Sitting BP was measured after resting for 15 minutes (BP15), 30 minutes (BP30), and 45 minutes (BP45). All the BP were measured by the same investigator using an electronic BP device. BP Results: We included 80 (53 women) participants with mean age of 62.4±8.4 years. Mean BP15 was 152.3±26.3 for systolic BP (SBP) and 88.5±15.1 mmHg for diastolic BP (DBP). Compared to BP15, there was a significant reduction of 8.3 (−6.5%) mmHg (P Conclusions: Resting for 45 minutes rather than the recommended 5 to 10 minutes reduce SBP/DBP of 8.3/3.1 mmHg at 30 and 13.5/5.5 mmHg at 45 minutes and may improve the reliability of the office blood pressure values.