Triage Strategy Uses an Algorithm to Diagnose Hypertension

Guidelines recommend ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) or home BP monitoring to confirm diagnoses of hypertension in patients with mildly or moderately elevated office BPs, especially before initiating treatment (NEJM JW Gen Med Dec 15 2017 and J Am Coll Cardiol 2018; 71:e127). However, all patients with suspected hypertension probably do not benefit from out-of-office monitoring. In this prospective observational study, investigators validated an algorithm, based on the Predicting Out of Office Blood Pressure (PROOF-BP) calculator, to triage patients with suspected or resistant hypertension for ambulatory monitoring. The PROOF-BP calculator uses three office-based BP readings plus age, sex, height, weight, and hypertensive and ca…