Identification of missed hypertension and hypertensive arteriopathy with home versus ambulatory blood pressure measurement in patients with tia or minor stroke.
Webb A., Li L., Simoni M., Wilson M., Paul N., Tarassenko L., Rothwell P.
Hypertension is a major treatable cause of incident and recurrent stroke. However, it can be missed by one-off clinic measurements. Hypertension guidelines therefore currently recommend ambulatory monitoring (ABPM) prior to treatment in primary prevention. Given high rates of under-treatment of hypertension in secondary prevention after TIA and stroke, we compared Bluetooth home BP monitoring (HBPM) and ABPM in identifying hypertension missed at initial assessment, with validation against pre-morbid BP and markers of hypertensive arteriopathy.