Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring in diabetic hypertensive patients, single center report--preliminary results.

ABPM (ambulatory blood pressure monitoring) has been considered to be a useful tool for the diagnosis and management of arterial hypertension and is a better predictor of future cardiovascular events as compared with conventional office-based BP measurements. Despite its potential values, ABPM is not yet widely used in many clinical offices mainly because of lack of knowledge and unavailability. Aims of this preliminary study are to determine the control of hypertension and circadian BP characteristics in patients referred to our Centre whom we enrolled in the "HRKMAT" Study-Croatian Registry of ABPM. Although patients included in HRKMAT Study had other risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, in this paper we analyzed differences between hypertensive diabetics (N = 20) and nondiabetics (N = 57). 24-hours ABPM was performed with an automated oscillometric device Mobil-O-Graph NG Vers.20 and office BP using mercury sphygmomanometer. Average office BP was 139/90 mmHg, and average 24h ABPM was 130/82 mmHg. Majority of hypertensive patients used antihypertensive drugs (79.2%). Diabetic patients had higher systolic BP but lower diastolic BP. There were no statistically significant differences in dipping status, but earlier BP surge was noticed in reverse diabetic dippers than in reverse non-diabetic dippers. Though no significant, there was higher prevalence of WCH ("white coat hypertension") in diabetics, and we found MH (masked hypertension) in only two patients. These are preliminary results on ABPM from our centre and of HRKMAT registry. Further and more valuable data and results are awaited from the main HRKMAT database.