Around-the-clock ambulatory blood pressure monitoring is required to properly diagnose resistant hypertension and assess associated vascular risk

Curr Hypertens Rep. 2014 Jul;16(7):445. doi: 10.1007/s11906-014-0445-9.

Abstract

Diagnosis of resistant hypertension (RH) is currently based upon awake-time office blood pressure (BP). An increasing number of studies have documented abnormally elevated sleep-time BP in most RH patients, indicating that diagnosis of true RH cannot be determined solely by comparison of office BP with either patient awake-time BP self-measurements or awake-BP mean from ambulatory monitoring (ABPM), as is customary in the published literature. Moreover, the ABPM-determined sleep-time BP mean is an independent and stronger predictor of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease (CVD) risk than either daytime office/ABPM-derived awake or 24-hour means. Results of the recently completed MAPEC (Monitorización Ambulatoria para Predicción de Eventos Cardiovasculares) prospective outcomes study, which included a large cohort of RH patients, established that time of treatment relative to circadian rhythms constituted a critically important yet often neglected variable with respect to BP control. The study found that bedtime versus morning ingestion of the full dose of ≥1 BP-lowering medications resulted in both better therapeutic normalization of sleep-time BP and reduced CVD morbidity and mortality, including in RH patients. Accordingly, ABPM is highly recommended to properly diagnose and manage true RH, with a bedtime hypertension medication regimen as the therapeutic scheme of choice.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Antihypertensive Agents / therapeutic use
  • Blood Pressure Monitoring, Ambulatory* / methods
  • Humans
  • Hypertension / complications
  • Hypertension / diagnosis*
  • Hypertension / drug therapy
  • Risk
  • Sleep / physiology
  • Time Factors

Substances

  • Antihypertensive Agents