[White coat hypertension under outpatient conditions: indications for ambulatory monitoring of arterial pressure].
Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) is to be considered an excellent diagnostic tool, progressively used by the clinicians in their routine medical practice, in order to assess both medical diagnosis and antihypertensive treatment efficacy. ABPM permits to distinguish with a high level of accuracy the true hypertensives, from the false hypertensives or from subjects with isolated clinical hypertension, the old so-called "white coat hypertension". Prognostic implications of hypertension and target organ involvement can be assessed more accurately with ABPM than with basal blood pressure measurement. ABPM also permits an excellent approach to 24-hour blood pressure load, establishing different categories of circadian curves. In the same way, the 24-hour monitoring observation period during a normal daily life, helps to identify the hot moments of circadian period, correlating them, with changes in blood pressure, and subsequently with cardiovascular events, particularly in the early morning hours, during the so-called circadian vulnerable period, in which a significant increase in both cardiovascular events and stroke are usually observed. Nevertheless, some limitations are still linked to ABPM systems and equipments; on the one hand, the lack of a cut-off point, to establish the limits of true normally, and on the other one; the today intermittent character of ABPM measurements, do not permit an exact assessment of 24-hour blood pressure profile, containing all the hemodynamic changes. Several ongoing studies, will bring in the near future the very necessary answers to all these interrogants.
Calderón Montero
A
A
Centro de Salud Rosa Luxemburgo, Madrid.
Palma Gámiz
J L
JL
D018660:Blood Pressure Monitoring, Ambulatory; D002940:Circadian Rhythm; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology; D010361:Patients / Q000523:psychology; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations