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(Hypertension. 2007;50:284.)
© 2007 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorial Commentaries

Is the Case for ABPM as a Routine Investigation in Clinical Practice Not Overwhelming?

Eoin O’Brien

From the Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, University College Dublin, Ireland.

Correspondence to Eoin O’Brien, Professor of Molecular Pharmacology, The Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. E-mail eobrien@iol.ie

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

One sometimes has to ponder what it takes to make a technique so indispensable to practice that it must, needs be, become the rule rather than the exception. And yet nothing is new under the sun; it seems to me that ambulatory blood pressure measurement (ABPM) is in much the same historic position at the start of the 21st century as conventional measurement with the mercury sphygmomanometer and stethoscope was at the end of the 19th when one skeptic, while acknowledging that "the middle-aged and successful physician may slowly and imperceptibly lose the exquisite sensitiveness of his finger tips through repeated attacks of gouty neuritis," went on to express his sincere doubts that the sphygmomanometer would ever be welcomed by "the overworked and underpaid general practitioner, already loaded with thermometer, stethoscope, etc., etc.,."¹ ABPM is not exactly new to medicine; in fact it has been with us in one form or another for nearly half a century. In 1964 Sir George Pickering showed for the first time the profound fall in blood pressure recorded during sleep and the fluctuations in pressure during the course of 24 hours. Pickering’s group went on to develop an ambulatory technique whereby pressure could be measured directly from the brachial artery with a small plastic catheter, and the first intraarterial ambulatory blood pressure measurement in unrestricted man was performed in 1966. In 1962, Hinman and his colleagues described the first truly portable ambulatory system for the noninvasive measurement of blood pressure, which was subsequently developed . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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