How Often Should Patients with Controlled Hypertension Monitor Their Blood Pressure?

Clinicians frequently recommend that patients with hypertension monitor their blood pressure (BP) at home, but little guidance exists to specify how often this should be done. Although high values might warrant management changes, normal physiological variation and technical measurement issues could yield clinically insignificant high readings, leading to anxiety and overtreatment.

Investigators analyzed 12 months of home BP readings among ≈800 patients with hypertension in the U.K. who were on stable medication regimens for at least 4 weeks. A model that incorporated BP variability provided a probability that any single high reading reflected a true increase and not a false-positive fluctuation.