A U.K. study just published in The Lancet suggests that ambulatory blood pressure monitoring could soon become standard practice for patients thought to have high blood pressure. The method requires a patient to wear a blood pressure cuff for a 24-hour period, which takes readings automatically at hourly and half-hourly intervals, and generates a report from the recorded data when the patient returns the device. It s an approach that doctors in both the U.K. and U.S. are now hailing as more accurate, and thus more cost-effective, than the longtime practice of measuring a patient s blood pressure during a standard clinical appointment. In fact, England s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is recommending ambulatory monitoring as best practice.
Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring is more cost-effective for a number of reasons. Most significantly, its ability to monitor a patient s blood pressure over a 24-hour period allows for a more accurate diagnosis of hypertension. One in four people who have an elevated blood pressure reading in a clinic will not have raised ambulatory readings; thus treatment for patients who don t actually have hypertension can be avoided. Since blood pressure varies during the day, averages of ambulatory readings are better at predicting cardiovascular outcomes, compared to a standard reading during a doctor s visit.
This is very important news, says ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross. A method that will minimize misdiagnosis and reduce the chances of serious cardiovascular events and is cost-effective is most likely something that we ll be hearing more about.
