Reproducibility of ambulatory blood pressure mea- surement in patients with coronary heart disease

Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) is a useful tool to establish the diagnosis of hypertension as well as for the monitoring of the response to antihypertensive therapy. We aimed to assess the reproducibility of the circadian blood pressure (BP) pattern (24 h, daytime and night-time BP and heart rate HR), the categorisation of individuals as dippers and non-dippers and the morning BP peak in three consecutive ABPM recordings obtained in patients with coronary artery disease. Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of the reproducibility of 3 repeated ABPM obtained in 49 patients with coronary artery disease (age: 61.4 ± 7.9 years, 41 males, 36 hypertensives) enrolled in two previous studies using Tracker NIBP2 devices (Delmar, Del Mar Reynolds Medical, Hertford, UK). The standard interval of measurement was 20 minutes during the day and 45 minutes at night. The patients underwent ABPM on three separate days at intervals two to six weeks apart, on a typical week day with normal daily activity. All patients had a history of coronary artery disease and stable cardiovascular medication during the period of the three measurements. Results: Using analysis of variance for repeated measurement (ANOVA, Pillai’s trace test) and by Pearson’s correlation coefficient there was no significant variance in 24–hour, day and night BP and HR as well as morning BP peak. The categorisation of the subjects as dippers and non-dippers was also highly reproducible (p = 0.852; ns). Conclusions: Our data confirm that in patients with coronary artery disease the 24–hour recording of the circadian blood pressure patterns using Tracker NIBP2 devices is highly reproducible.