Twenty-four hour ambulatory blood pressure for the management of antihypertensive treatment: a randomized controlled trial

The aim of this study was to assess whether the use of 24-h blood pressure (BP) measurement in the management of antihypertensive therapy improves BP in patients with sustained hypertension. Patients with sustained hypertension (office BP >= 140/90mm Hg, and 24-h systolic BP >= 130/80 mm Hg) were randomly assigned to a strategy using 24-h BP to manage antihypertensive treatment (target <130/80 mm Hg) or to a standard strategy using office BP (target <140/90 mm Hg). The primary end point was change in 24-h systolic BP at 1 year of follow-up. We included 136 patients in the primary analysis. After 1 year of follow-up, the change in 24-h systolic BP was significantly greater in the ambulatory BP group compared with the office BP group (mean difference (95% confidence interval) -3.6 (-7.0, -0.3), P = 0.03). Intention-to-treat analysis revealed essentially unchanged results. The mean number of antihypertensive drugs per participant at 1 year of follow-up was 1.76 +/- 1.1 and 1.95 +/- 0.9 in the ambulatory and office BP group, respectively (P = 0.049). The benefit of ambulatory BP monitoring was mainly seen in patients with previously known hypertension (mean difference -7.2 (-11.6, -2.8), P = .002), but not in those with newly detected hypertension (mean difference 0.2 (-4.9, 5.4), P = 0.93). In conclusion, using 24-h BP for the management of antihypertensive therapy in patients with sustained hypertension leads to a greater BP reduction compared with a standard treatment strategy using office BP, although fewer antihypertensive drugs were used in the ambulatory BP group.