24-hour AmbulatoryBlood Pressure Monitoring

Overview

24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) is the exact, fully automatic and noninva-sive method for evaluation of the 24-hour hemodynamic profile of the subject by multiple andregular blood pressure and heart rate measurement. In comparison with causal blood pressuremeasurement, ABPM allows the definition of daytime and nightime blood pressure averages,diurnal changes of blood pressure, localization of periods of the most frequent appearance ofhypertensive values, specification of hypertensive load, percent time elevation and diagnosing ofwhit coat phenomenon. The use of all mentioned findings leads to the improvement of bloodpressure control in patients with resistant hypertension, polymorbidity, helps to analyze paroxys-mal hypertension, verify diagnosis of the hypertension in patients with borderline or high normalblood pressure. The final profit is the reduction of the target organ damage and reduction ofcardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Definite diagnosis of the white coat phenomenon mar-kedly decreases consumption of the antihypertensive drugs. In addition, this method enablesbetter evaluation of hypotensive syndromes and is very helpful in the investigation of physiologyof blood pressure regulation, biorhythms and in pharmacodynamical studies of the new antihy-pertensives.

Key words:
Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring - Hypertension - Target organ damage - Cardi-ovascular complications.