Can improved software facilitate the wider use of ambulatory blood pressure measurement in clinical practice?

bp: Blood pressure analysis in R

Despite the world-wide prevalence of hypertension, there is a lack in open-source software for analyzing blood pressure data. The R package bp fills this gap by providing functionality for blood pressure data processing, visualization, and feature extraction. In addition to the comprehensive functionality, the package includes six sample data sets covering continuous arterial pressure data (AP), home blood pressure monitoring data (HBPM) and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring data (ABPM), making it easier for researchers to get started. The R package bp is publicly available on CRAN and at https://github.com/johnschwenck/bp.

Twenty-four-hour ambulatory blood pressure measurement in clinical practice and research: a critical review of a technique in need of implementation

This review presents evidence that ambulatory blood pressure measurement (ABPM) should be used more widely in clinical practice and hypertension research. The technique, which should be mandatory in trials of antihypertensive drugs, is not being used in all studies of antihypertensive drug efficacy. ABPM is also being under-used in outcome studies. The failure to implement ABPM in primary care and hypertension research is impeding patient management and scientific advancement. ABPM offers so many advantages in assessing the efficacy of blood pressure (BP)-lowering drugs that it should be mandatory in pharmacological trials. Likewise, the technique provides a means of achieving BP control in clinical practice, which is essential if we are to halt the epidemic of the cardiovascular consequences of hypertension. However, if ABPM is to be implemented for these purposes, certain requirements will need to be fulfilled. These include the availability of accurate, patient-friendly and inexpensive devices; standardization of the presentation and plotting of data with summary statistics for day-to-day practice; provision of comprehensive data analysis for research; an interpretative report to facilitate use in busy clinical practice; a trend report to demonstrate efficacy or otherwise of treatment in clinical practice and online transmission of data to provide immediate real-time data analysis. The reasons why ABPM is not being implemented are reviewed, and proposals are made to make the technique more acceptable.

The circadian nuances of hypertension: a reappraisal of 24-h ambulatory blood pressure measurement in clinical practice

Ambulatory blood pressure measurement has been in use in clinical practice for nearly half a century. However, despite the benefits the technique brings to managing patients with hypertension it is much under-used in practice. The purpose of this review is to examine critically the information that can be derived from the technique and to highlight the application of this evidence in clinical practice.

Superiority of ambulatory over clinic blood pressure measurement in predicting mortality: the Dublin outcome study

The purpose of this study was to determine if ambulatory blood pressure measurement predicted total and cardiovascular mortality over and beyond clinic blood pressure measurement and other cardiovascular risk factors; 5292 untreated hypertensive patients referred to a single blood pressure clinic who had clinic and ambulatory blood pressure measurement at baseline were followed up in a prospective study of mortality outcome. Multiple Cox regression was used to model time to total and cause-specific mortality for ambulatory blood pressure measurement while adjusting for clinic blood pressure measurement and other risk factors at baseline. There were 646 deaths (of which 389 were cardiovascular) during a median follow-up period of 8.4 years. With adjustment for gender, age, risk indices, and clinic blood pressure, higher mean values of ambulatory blood pressure were independent predictors for cardiovascular mortality. The relative hazard ratio for each 10-mm Hg increase in systolic blood pressure was 1.12 (1.06 to 1.18; P<0.001) for daytime and 1.21 (1.15 to 1.27; P<0.001) for nighttime systolic blood pressure. The hazard ratios for each 5-mm Hg increase in diastolic blood pressure were 1.02 (0.99 to 1.07; P=NS) for daytime and 1.09 (1.04 to 1.13; P<0.01) for nighttime diastolic pressures. The hazard ratios for nighttime ambulatory blood pressure remained significant after adjustment for daytime ambulatory blood pressure. These results have 2 important clinical messages: ambulatory measurement of blood pressure is superior to clinic measurement in predicting cardiovascular mortality, and nighttime blood pressure is the most potent predictor of outcome.