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Valuable prognostic information provided by 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring beyond the blood pressure level

Journal of Human Hypertension volume 25, pages 519–520 (2011)Cite this article

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Ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) monitoring has been recognized as a valuable tool in the management of hypertension in terms of diagnosis and prognosis. The advantage of ABP compared with the conventional office measurements has been attributed to the large number of measurements and the fact that these are obtained in the routine daily activities of each individual. Thus, a more reliable assessment of the ‘average’ BP level is obtained.

Apart from calculating the average ABP, several investigators attempted to perform more sophisticated analysis of the ABP data in the hope that the prognostic ability of the method might be improved. Thus, aspects of the 24-h BP profile and variability, such as nocturnal decline, the morning surge and the standard deviation, have been shown to provide independent prognostic information.1, 2 Moreover, the growing interest in arterial stiffness as a marker of organ damage has led to the investigation of indirect indices derived from ABP analysis, namely, the ambulatory pulse pressure (APP)3, 4 and, more recently, the ambulatory arterial stiffness index (AASI).5, 6, 7 Given that both APP and AASI are derived from the same data and reflect arterial wall stiffness, the practical questions are which one has stronger predictive value and whether one of them should become obsolete.

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  1. Third University Department of Medicine, Hypertension Center, Sotiria Hospital, Athens, Greece

    G S Stergiou & E G Nasothimiou

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  1. G S Stergiou
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Correspondence to G S Stergiou.

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Stergiou, G., Nasothimiou, E. Valuable prognostic information provided by 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring beyond the blood pressure level. J Hum Hypertens 25, 519–520 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/jhh.2011.26

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