Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring: from old concepts to novel insights

Abstract

Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) is an out-of-office technique for the assessment of 24-h blood pressure measurements. ABPM is indicated to diagnose many conditions, including white-coat hypertension, resistant hypertension, episodic hypertension, nocturnal hypertension, autonomic dysfunction, hypotension secondary to excessive usage of antihypertensive medication, and masked hypertension. ABPM gives a better prediction of clinical outcomes in patients with hypertension and cardiovascular diseases when compared to office blood pressure measurements. Recently, several new indices have been introduced with the aim of predicting various clinical end-points in several patient populations. In this review, we aimed to determine the clinical utility of 24-h ABPM and its potential implications for the management of hypertension in patients with a high risk of cardiovascular mortality and morbidity, as well as various novel indices that can predict clinical end-points in different patient populations.