A recent report found that office BP has no value in predicting cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality in patients with resistant hypertension. Higher ambulatory measurements, however, are good indicators of these outcomes, according to the same report.
Gil F. Salles, MD, PhD, and colleagues in Rio de Janeiro followed 556 resistant-hypertension patients for up to nine years. At baseline, the subjects underwent office BP measurement and then recorded their own ambulatory BP every 15 minutes throughout the day and every 30 minutes at night.
After a median of 4.8 years—with at least three to four follow-ups per year—109 patients (19.6%) reached the primary end point: a composite of all fatal and non-fatal CV events including, but not limited to, fatal or nonfatal heart attack or stroke, sudden cardiac death, new-onset heart failure, and death from progressive heart failure.
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“No office BP presented any prognostic importance for any of the end points evaluated,” the researchers noted (Arch Intern Med. 2008;168:2340-2346).
