Library · Test
Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring
Make it clearer
Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring is a test in which the person wears a cuff for 24 hours and goes on with their usual life: working, eating, sleeping.
The cuff connects to a small portable device that takes readings on its own, without anyone switching it on, every 15 to 30 minutes, and stores each one. What you end up with is not a single number, it is a whole day of numbers, day and night.
That matters because blood pressure is not a fixed number: it rises and falls with physical or mental effort, stress, heat, or cold. And because being in front of a health professional can push that moment's reading up or down; when it goes up, that is called white coat hypertension, and when the office reading looks fine but the readings outside the office do not, it is called masked hypertension. A snapshot can fool you; a 24 hour movie is much less likely to.
In brief
Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring means wearing a cuff for 24 hours while the person goes about a normal day.
The cuff connects to a portable device that takes readings on its own every 15 to 30 minutes and stores every daytime and nighttime reading.
It is useful because blood pressure rises and falls through the day and because the presence of a health professional can change the office reading.
Sources (2)
- Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG), InformedHealth.orgHow is blood pressure measured?, InformedHealth.orgPublished
- National Center for Biotechnology InformationBlood Pressure Measurement. StatPearls
This page explains the topic in general terms; it does not tell anyone what treatment to follow.
Updated