Blood Pressure Evaluation by Noninvasive and Traditional Methods Consistencies and Discrepancies Among

Three hundred eight outpatients referred for hyperlension were studied. A continuous beat-tobeat noninvasive recording (Finapres) of blood pressure evaluated the blood pre ss ure increase ( 9 mm Hg systolic and 4 mm Hg diastolic) induced by office sphygmomanometry. Thereafter, patients underwent a 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. The evaluation against Finapres showed that office sphygmomanometry overestimates the systolic blood pressure by 3 ± 36 mm Hg (mean ± 2 SD) and the diastolic blood pressure by 15 ± 25 mm Hg (mean ± 2 SD). Blood pressure monitoring showed similar discrepancies. On the basis of both monitoring ( normalcy defined from a population of 550 normotensive subjects) and office sphygmomanometry, patients were considered normotensive, hypertensive ( either untreated or under active drug treatment), white coat hypertensive (monitoring below the 95th percentile and sphygmomanometry more than 140/90 mm Hg, either untreated or under active drug treatment), and reverse white coat patients