Cardiology Letters 2020, 29(2):102-105

Indication and importance of ABPM in clinical practice

Gašpar Ľ^{1, 2}, Filipová S^{3, 4}

¹ I. interná klinika LF UK a UN Bratislava

² Inštitút fyzioterapie, balneológie a liečebnej rehabilitácie v Piešťanoch, UCM Trnava

³ Klinika kardiológie a angiológie LF SZU, Bratislava

⁴ Oddelenia neinvazívnej kardiológie, NÚSCH, a. s., Bratislava, Slovenská republika

Arterial hypertension is one of the most important risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, including ischemic and haemorrhagic stroke, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and also dementia, vision loss and kidney failure. Risk of cardiovascular complications increases continuously with blood pressure. Indication categories of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) are diagnostic, therapeutic and prognostic. In addition to the standard parameters of blood pressure, ABPM enables monitoring of its circadian variability with the determination of diurnal index. It provides also indispensable information about the effectiveness of drug therapy in relation to the blood pressure values reduction, duration of the drug effectiveness over time (chronopharmacological aspects) and influence of medical treatment on blood pressure variability. According to several studies, the nocturnal blood pressure is a better predictor of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality as a daily blood pressure and preserved diurnal rhythm of blood pressure is associated with a significantly better prognosis. ABPM results significantly improve our management options for patients with arterial hypertension.

Keywords: ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM); diurnal blood pressure index; dipping; prognosis

Published: February 1, 2020  Show citation