Night-time blood pressure assessment is found to be important in diagnosing hypertension

September 23, 2022

When blood pressure is monitored over 24 hours, individuals can be divided into three groups according to their blood pressure pattern:• ‘dippers’, for whom the night-time blood pressure is lower than the day-time blood pressure (which is the case for healthy young people),• ‘non-dippers’, for whom night-time and day-time blood pressure values are not very different, and• ‘reverse dippers’, for whom, contrary to expectations, the night-time blood pressure is higher than the day-time blood pressure, when they are up and active. Day-time blood pressure measurements are not enough: it is vitally important to identify who is a reverse dipper through 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring.' However, day-time blood pressure measurements are not capable of detecting high blood pressure in these highest-risk patients whose blood pressure rises at night. This is particularly important for those above the age of 60, as the higher night-time blood pressure increases with age and blood pressure checks in the surgery and patient-self monitoring at home is not capable of picking up high night-time blood pressure.' • This study used systolic blood pressure only to compute the 24-hour blood pressure patterns of the included participants, conforming to common practice in this field.

The source of this news is from University of Oxford