[Diagnostic and therapeutic significance of automatic circadian monitoring in hypertension]

Abstract

A noninvasive, fully automatic blood pressure monitoring system has been developed to make the measurement of blood pressure more reliable and to help individualizing anti-hypertensive therapy. The authors draw attention to the importance of the circadian blood pressure variability and the "white coat hypertension" phenomenon. The error due to overlooking the changes in circadian blood pressure and to the "white coat" effect could be avoided with automatic blood pressure monitoring. Their system consists of two subunits: the Nippon Colin (BP 203 MII) blood pressure monitor, which has been fitted to the Commodore 64 computer by their own interface and data transfer program. Data analyzing and graphic displaying programs have also been developed by them. The diagnostic and therapeutic importance of blood pressure monitoring are demonstrated with representative cases of patients with essential, renoparenchymal and renovascular hypertension. The perspectives of this method in clinical pharmacology are also illustrated and discussed.