Blood pressure measurement: why, how, when, and where?

Abstract

With the publication of the recommendations of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), ambulatory blood pressure measurement (ABPM) must be seen as an indispensible investigation for good clinical practice. The technique provides a means of achieving blood pressure (BP) control in clinical practice, which is essential if the epidemic of the cardiovascular consequences of hypertension is to be halted. However, if ABPM is to be implemented for these purposes, certain requirements need to be fulfilled. These include the availability of accurate, patient-friendly and inexpensive devices, standardisation of the presentation and plotting of data with summary statistics for day-to-day practice, provision of comprehensive data analysis for research, an interpretative report to facilitate use in busy clinical practice, a trend report to demonstrate efficacy or otherwise of treatment in clinical practice, and online transmission of data to provide immediate real-time data analysis.