06/12/2013

Assessment and management of blood-pressure variability

dic 6th, 2013. En: Propuestas del editor.

Por: Gianfranco Parati, Juan E. Ochoa, Carolina Lombardi y Grzegorz Bilo. Nature Reviews Cardiology 10, 143-155 (March 2013).

Blood pressure (BP) is characterized by marked short-term fluctuations occurring within a 24 h period, including beat-to-beat, minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, and day-to-night changes. Long-term, substantial variations in BP have also been shown to occur over more-prolonged periods of time, for example days, weeks, months, seasons, and even years. Rather than representing ‘background noise’, or a phenomenon occurring at random, these variations are thought to be the result of complex interactions between extrinsic environmental and behavioural factors and intrinsic cardiovascular regulatory mechanisms (neural central, neural reflex, and humoral influences) that are not yet completely understood.