Clinical evaluation of a novel ambulatory automatic blood pressure monitoring system.

Reliability and reproducibility of a new automatic ambulatory blood pressure recorder were tested on 31 subjects (18 normotensives and 13 hypertensives). Of 3688 recordings, 1424 measurements were cross-checked with a sphygmomanometer in standing or sitting position at the beginning and at the end of a twenty-four hour monitoring period. In the normotensive subjects cross-checkings were performed also during a treadmill exercise stress test. Analysis of variance did not indicate statistical differences between the two types of measurement (p greater than 0.09 for systolic and p greater than 0.62 for diastolic), and a significant linear correlation was found at rest (r = 0.99, p less than 0.001 for systolic and r = 0.98, p less than 0.001 for diastolic pressure). During the effort test the device was unable to correctly measure blood pressure values after the first step. During the twenty-four hour monitoring period only 1.1% of the preprogrammed measurements were lost for each subject. The recorder seems to be a suitable and reliable tool for automatic blood pressure monitoring.