Diagnosing hypertension in primary care : a retrospective cohort study to investigate the importance of night-time blood pressure assessment

© The Authors..

BACKGROUND: Ambulatory blood-pressure monitoring (ABPM) has become less frequent in primary care since the COVID-19 pandemic, with home blood-pressure monitoring (HBPM) often the preferred alternative; however, HBPM cannot measure night-time blood pressure (BP), and patients whose night-time BP does not dip, or rises (reverse dipping), have poorer cardiovascular outcomes.

AIM: To investigate the importance of measuring night-time BP when assessing individuals for hypertension.

DESIGN AND SETTING: Retrospective cohort study of two patient populations - namely, hospital patients admitted to four UK acute hospitals located in Oxfordshire, and participants of the BP in different ethnic groups (BP-Eth) study, who were recruited from 28 UK general practices in the West Midlands.

METHOD: Using BP data collected for the two cohorts, three systolic BP phenotypes (dipper, non-dipper, and reverse dipper) were studied.

RESULTS: Among the hospital cohort, 48.9% (n = 10 610/21 716) patients were 'reverse dippers', with an average day-night systolic BP difference of +8.0 mmHg. Among the community (BP-Eth) cohort, 10.8% (n = 63/585) of patients were reverse dippers, with an average day-night systolic BP difference of +8.5 mmHg. Non-dipper and reverse-dipper phenotypes both had lower daytime systolic BP and higher night-time systolic BP than the dipper phenotype. Average daytime systolic BP was lowest in the reverse-dipping phenotype (this was 6.5 mmHg and 6.8 mmHg lower than for the dipper phenotype in the hospital and community cohorts, respectively), thereby placing them at risk of undiagnosed, or masked, hypertension.

CONCLUSION: Not measuring night-time BP puts all groups, other than dippers, at risk of failure to identify hypertension. As a result of this study, it is recommended that GPs should offer ABPM to all patients aged ≥60 years as a minimum when assessing for hypertension.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2023

Erschienen:

2023

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:73

Enthalten in:

The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners - 73(2023), 726 vom: 07. Jan., Seite e16-e23

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Armitage, Laura C [VerfasserIn]
Davidson, Shaun [VerfasserIn]
Mahdi, Adam [VerfasserIn]
Harford, Mirae [VerfasserIn]
McManus, Richard [VerfasserIn]
Farmer, Andrew [VerfasserIn]
Watkinson, Peter [VerfasserIn]
Tarassenko, Lionel [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Ambulatory blood-pressure monitoring
Blood pressure monitoring
Cardiovascular disease
Hypertension
Journal Article

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 23.12.2022

Date Revised 12.04.2023

published: Electronic-Print

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.3399/BJGP.2022.0160

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM348302304