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What time is the right time, and how to measure?

Journal of Human Hypertension volume 28, page 73 (2014)Cite this article

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Arterial blood pressure and its noninvasive measurement are strongly influenced by cardiovascular control mechanisms, where actors are continuously responding to feedback from different sensors. Various factors of transient nature are therefore affecting each single blood pressure reading, subsequently leading to the fact that each measurement just may be seen as an actual snapshot of hemodynamics with limited persistent information. With the establishment of ambulatory and oscillometric blood pressure monitoring, researchers got means to unveil and especially quantify circadian and short-term variability of blood pressure. Since that time, phenomena like blood pressure dipping patterns, white coat and masked hypertension entered the stage and questioned the usefulness of single (office) measurements. In addition, the upcoming ability of measuring arterial stiffness provided evidence that vascular aging influences blood pressure its variability as well as the measurement itself.

In this issue of the Journal of Human Hypertension Nikolic et al.1 present a remarkable piece of work comparing carefully different types of blood pressure measurements at various time points to provide profound information on the transient behavior of blood pressure regulation and methodological issues of blood pressure assessment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Health and Environment Department, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Vienna, Austria

    S Wassertheurer & B Hametner

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  1. S Wassertheurer
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  2. B Hametner
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Correspondence to S Wassertheurer.

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Wassertheurer, S., Hametner, B. What time is the right time, and how to measure?. J Hum Hypertens 28, 73 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/jhh.2013.65

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