Table 8: Special Situations for Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring

Table 8:
Special Situations for Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring
Setting	Role for ABPM
White-coat hypertension	Allows identification of patients who exhibit high blood pressure within the clinical setting and yet remain normotensive outside the office. Conversely, allows identification and reinforcement of the diagnosis of hypertension in those patients inclined to believe they have white-coat hypertension yet who remain hypertensive outside the clinical setting.
High-normal blood pressure	Increases the accuracy of diagnosis of patients whose blood pressure readings are consistently borderline despite multiple clinical readings.
Nocturnal hypertension	The presence of elevated nocturnal blood pressure may have important clinical relevance in selected patient groups, such as patients with secondary hypertension or diabetes. ABPM remains the test of choice for outpatient evaluation of this condition.
Monitoring drug effects	ABPM provides important data with regard to compliance with therapy, the duration and effectiveness of specific agents, and the temporal relationship between the development of symptoms and the actual blood pressure present during these periods of symptoms.
Resistant hypertension	ABPM provides data for the compliance, effectiveness, and duration of drug therapy as well as the identification of other complicating factors (such as superimposed white-coat hypertension).