title: Prevalence of high blood pressure in Brazilian adolescents and quality of the employed methodological procedures: systematic review.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To review the literature on studies that estimated the prevalence of high blood pressure (HBP) or systemic arterial hypertension (SAH) in Brazilian adolescents, considering the employed methodological procedures.
  
  
  METHODS
  Bibliographical research of prevalence studies of HBP/SAH in adolescents from 1995 to 2010. The search was conducted in the electronic databases PubMed/Medline, Lilacs, SciELO, and Isi Adolec. The descriptors "hypertension", "BP", "teen", "students", "cross-sectional", "prevalence" and "Brazil" were used in Portuguese and English. Furthermore, a score ranging from 0 to 18 based on Recommendations for Blood Pressure Measurement in Humans and Experimental Animals and the VI Brazilian Guidelines of Hypertension was elaborated, in order to analyze the procedures used to measure BP in studies.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Twenty-one articles were identified, mostly published in the last 10 years, and 90.5% were performed in school-based and regions of the Southeast, Northeast and South. The prevalence of HBP/SAH ranged from 2.5 to 30.9%. The score of the studies ranged from 0 to 16. A significant negative correlation (rho = -0.504; p = 0.020) was observed between the prevalence of HBP/SAH and the score of BP measurement quality.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The great variability of PAE/SAH estimates appears to be influenced by methodological procedures used in the studies.
authors.affiliation: Universidade de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil.
authors.forename: Marina Gabriella Pereira de Andrada
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Magalhaes
authors.affiliation: Universidade de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil.
authors.forename: Luciano Machado Ferreira Tenorio de
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Oliveira
authors.affiliation: Universidade Estadual Paulista, Rio Claro, SP, Brasil.
authors.forename: Diego Giulliano Destro
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Christofaro
authors.affiliation: Universidade de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil.
authors.forename: Raphael Mendes
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Ritti-Dias
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001938:Brazil / Q000453:epidemiology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D016021:Epidemiologic Studies; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence