Is Office-Based Blood Pressure Monitoring Sufficient to Diagnose Pediatric Hypertension?

The gold standard for diagnosing pediatric hypertension is 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitoring (ABPM); however, this at-home testing can be burdensome. To evaluate whether office-based automated or manual BP monitoring could reliably identify children with true daytime ambulatory hypertension, researchers conducted a retrospective study in patients aged <18 years who visited a pediatric hypertension clinic. BPs were tested using three modalities: office-based automated BP measurement, office-based manual BP measurement, and 24-hour ABPM (reference).

Among 187 patients, nearly 75% were aged ≥13 years and most were boys. Twenty-seven percent of patients had hypertension. Between techniques, median systolic BP values taken via ABP…