Prognostic Value of Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring

Abstract

Twenty-four-hour noninvasive ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) monitoring is increasingly used in subjects with essential hypertension (1,2). Traditionally, diagnosis and management of hypertension are based on blood pressure (BP) measurements taken in the physician’s office, but several prospective studies conducted in the general population or in hypertensive subjects, either untreated or treated at the time of execution Open image in new window Fig. 1 Graphic representation of the association between office blood pressure and average daytime ambulatory blood pressure in 732 untreated hypertensive patients (our database). The figure shows that the observed ambulatory blood pressure is seldom that predicted by linear regression equation, while it is most often higher or lower than predicted. BP, blood pressure; SBP, systolic blood pressure. of ABP monitoring, have shown that ABP measurements provide a better prediction of clinical outcome compared with conventional clinic or office BP measurements, especially in mild and moderate hypertension (3–34). The advantages of ABP compared to office BP in predicting clinical outcome and the most appropriate way of interpreting the results of ABP monitoring will be discussed in this chapter.