Home blood-pressure monitoring: US and European consensus

For as long as blood pressure has been measured in clinical practice for the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension, the universally recommended technique has been auscultation. Over the past 30 years, however, the progressive growth in the use of automated devices, both for home and ambulatory blood-pressure monitoring over 24 h has emphasised the limitations of traditional clinic blood-pressure readings in assessing the severity of hypertension and prediction of risk. Although ambulatory blood-pressure monitoring has found limited clinical use because of its relative inconvenience and expense, home blood-pressure monitoring, without these limitations, is rapidly becoming widely used. Two groups of hypertension experts recently published recommendations aimed at increasing and improving the application of this technique in daily practice almost simultaneously in the USA (American Heart Association and two other US organisations) and in Europe (European Society of Hypertension). This paper summarizes their recommendations emphasizing the pointe were they agree.