Via practica 4/2011

Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring

There are three ways of measuring blood pressure (BP): casual (performed by healthcare provider at a healthcare facility); self-monitoring by patient or his/her relative at home; and a 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM). Casual measuring of the BP is unable to take large physiological variability of the BP, as well as its influence of mental condition or behaviour of the patient, into consideration. Self-monitoring does not allow to measure exceptionally important night BP values. Throughout the last few years, the ABPM has been considered the most objective method of BP measuring in the diagnostics and treatment process control of arterial hypertension. The advantages of ABPM are: higher accuracy, reliability, reproducibility, automaticity, stronger correlation with organ damage, and designation of prognostic importance of high BP.

Keywords: hypertension, ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, casual blood pressure