Unattended Automated Office Blood Pressure Measurement and Cardiac Target Organ Damage, A Pilot Study.

Introduction: The ESC-2018 guidelines suggest the use of Unattended automated office blood pressure (UAOBP) to avoid or at least reduce the white coat effect, even if do not support its use as preferred method.

Aim: To assess the pressure difference between UAOBP and Attended office blood pressure (AOBP) and to evaluate their correlations with target organ damage in hypertensive patients.

Methods: UAOBP and AOBP were taken in a cohort of 48 outpatients. The pressure difference between the 2 methods and their correlation with anthropometric and cardiac parameters were analyzed.

Results: Unattended systolic and diastolic BP were lower than Attended systolic and diastolic BP (135 ± 17 mmHg vs 139 ± 21 mmHg and 79 ± 10 mmHg vs 82 ± 10 mmg). ΔDBP was significantly directly correlated with female sex (r = 0.347, p = 0.016) and it was lower in men compared to women (0.11 ± 8.9 mmHg vs 6.07 ± 7.42 mmHg, p = 0.016). Correlation coefficients for LVMi and RWT for attended and unattended BP were not statistically different (for LVMi r = 0.286 vs r = 0.381, p = 0.61, for RWT r = 0.413 vs r = 0.363, p = 0.78). The relationship between attended and unattended BP was described by the following equation: y = - 4.68 + 1.06*x; where Y is the attended systolic BP and X is the unattended systolic BP; in accordance with this equation, an unattended systolic BP of 140 mmHg corresponds to an attended systolic BP of 143.7 mmHg.

Conclusions: UAOBP provides significantly lower values than AOBP. The difference in BP values between the two methods is much lower than the one obtained in most clinical studies.