Ambulatory and home blood pressure monitoring in children and adolescents: diagnosis of hypertension and assessment of target-organ damage

Estudios importantes sobre hipertension arterial de Cuba y el mundo

Ambulatory and home blood pressure monitoring in children and adolescents: diagnosis of hypertension and assessment of target-organ damage

Por: Nikos Karpettas, Efthimia Nasothimiou, Anastasios Kollias, Adriani Vazeou y George S Stergiou.  Hypertension Research (2013) 36, 285–292.

The prevalence of elevated blood pressure in children and adolescents is more common than previously believed and often represents the early onset of essential hypertension, particularly in adolescents. The definition of hypertension in children is based on distribution criteria and normalcy tables that provide blood pressure percentiles for each measurement method (office, ambulatory and home) according to the individual’s age, gender and body size. Owing to the white coat and masked hypertension phenomena, ambulatory blood pressure monitoring is indispensable for the diagnosis of hypertension in children. Home blood pressure monitoring in children has been less well studied, and at present, treatment decisions should not be based solely on such measurements.