The authors evaluated differences in the reliability of home blood pressure measurements taken in the morning, before dinner, and at bedtime. Forty-eight patients with hypertension (age range, 50-89 years; mean age, 76.4 years) measured their home blood pressure using a validated automatic information/communication technology-based device for 14 consecutive days. Those days were divided into the first seven days (1-7) and the following 8 to 14 days (days 8-14) and compared systolic blood pressure (SBP) reliability in the two periods for each measurement time point. In Bland-Altman analyses, morning SBP showed the least standard error of measurement (3.0 mm Hg). There were fixed biases in morning and before-dinner SBP with average limits of agreement of 3.9 and 6.4 mm Hg, respectively. For at-bedtime SBP, a random error was detected and the minimal detectable change was 13.8 mm Hg. The percentage of near-maximal variation of morning SBP was the smallest at 18.1%. Morning SBP therefore provided the most reliable home blood pressure value in the day.
Keywords: at-bedtime blood pressure; before-dinner blood pressure; morning blood pressure; reliability.
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