New approach to measurement of blood pressure in the office

Abstract

Automated office blood pressure (AOBP) measurement has important advantages over conventional manual office blood pressure (MOBP) readings. AOBP requires the use of a fully automated sphygmomanometer which takes multiple readings with the patient resting alone. By following these three principles of AOBP, it is possible to obtain office readings which are similar to home BP and to the awake ambulatory BP recorded with 24-h BP monitoring. All three methods of automated BP measurement define hypertension as a BP≥135/85mmHg. The correlation between the awake ambulatory BP (a recognized gold standard for predicting future cardiac events in relation to BP status) and AOBP is significantly stronger than it is for routine MOBP. AOBP eliminates office-induced hypertension (white coat hypertension) and correlates with target organ damage significantly stronger than does routine MOBP. After 100 years of manual BP measurement with the mercury sphygmomanometer, it is now time to adopt AOBP for use in routine clinical practice in order to achieve a more accurate assessment of a patient's BP status and future cardiovascular risk.