[Is white-coat hypertension a disease?].

White-coat hypertension can be defined as a hypertensive reaction in the physician's office in a usually normotensive individual. Several studies have shown that white-coat hypertension may be associated to slight metabolic or echocardiographic abnormalities, putting these individuals between normal subjects and true hypertensives; however, long-term evolution of white-coat hypertensives remains poorly known. The present study tries to solve this question. A retrospective study was performed on 63 individuals with office hypertension but normal ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. After a mean follow-up of 5.4 years, more than half of these subjects have become permanent hypertensives, the majority of them being at this time under hypotensive treatment. White-coat hypertension is probably not a disease but a factor predictive of later permanent hypertension; therefore, such individuals should be submitted to life style changes and to regular blood pressure controls.