Ambulatory blood pressure measurement is indispensable to good clinical practice: a comment

The evidence for ambulatory blood pressure measurement (ABPM) as an indispensable investigation in clinical practice is now overwhelming. For years the argument against ABPM has been based on a lack of evidence showing the technique was superior to conventional measurement in predicting outcome. There is now ample evidence from longitudinal studies that ABPM is a much stronger predictor of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality than conventional measurement.1 Moreover, though the relevance of nocturnal hypertension has been a controversial topic, recent evidence has shown that a non-dipping nocturnal pattern is a strong independent risk for cardiovascular mortality.