[Use of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring]

Abstract

Hypertension (HT) is the most important risk factor in the development of cardiovascular disease. Classically diagnosis and management have been based on conventional office blood pressure (BP) but it has as main limitation that only offers information of a particular time and presents multiple biases dependent on inherent variability of blood pressure and measurement technique itself. Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) consists of performing multiple measurement of blood pressure, performed automatically, outside the medical setting, during the normal activities of the individual and in a 24-hour period. Multiple studies have demonstrated the prognosis superiority in the development of cardiovascular disease of ABPM, it allows detection of white coat HT as well, avoiding overdiagnosis and overtreatment and the detection of patients with masked H T, who contrarily are at risk of underdetection and undertreatment. Also it provides nighttime BP and circadian variability that provides additional prognostic value. © 2017 SEHLELHA. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring; Blood pressure; Hipertensión; Hypertension; Monitorización ambulatoria de la presión arterial; Presión arterial.