Abstract
Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) is a new method of blood pressure (BP) assessment. It measures BP non-invasively, intermittently in a regular time intervals during 24 hours per day as well as during sleep.
The readings are taken under ambulatory conditions. The advantages of ABPM are an adequate number of measurements (60-70) which correlates with intraarterial measurements, good reproducibility and the possibility to reveal circadian rhythms of BP and to measure BP during the sleep.
The disadvantages are the high price of the device (about 6000 USD with software) and the need of cooperation of the child. ABPM has a diagnostic and therapeutic significance.
It is an important method for the diagnosis of persistent hypertension, for revealing "white coat hypertension", it provides important information on the aetiology of hypertension and enables us to control antihypertensive therapy more efficiently. The parameters of ABPM correlate better with cardiovascular morbidity and mortality than those of casual BP.
ABPM improved considerably the diagnosis and therapy of hypertension. It is expected that it will become an essential method in BP evaluation also in children.