Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring in hypertensive adolescents

The purpose of this study was to determine the ability of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring to identify youths with chronic blood pressure elevation. Nineteen adolescent boys were studied, ten had 5-year average systolic or diastolic pressures above the 95th percentile, nine had normal pressure. A Del Mar Avionics Pressurometer III system recorded an average of 121 readings on each subject. The coefficients of variation for pressure were similar for hypertensive and normotensive individuals. During classes, eight of the ten hypertensive youths had elevated pressures in over half of the measurements. Also during these classes eight of ten hypertensive boys had average systolic or diastolic pressure above the 95th percentile, whereas only one of nine normotensive boys had average pressures above this level. We suggest that schooltime ambulatory pressures may be most useful in classifying the blood pressure trend in a youth.