People with high blood pressure, showed rise in pressure when the measurement was taken by a doctor, it is due to white coat effect and patient becomes stressed by being in hospital, new study explained. High blood pressure affects around forty percent adults worldwide and is a major cause of heart attack, stroke, kidney disease and heart failure.
Researchers explain that giving people a cuff to wear for twenty four hours known as ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, that records the bloods pressure at regular intervals is a better way to measure the blood pressure because external factors can effect on the readings.
To confirm the effects researchers examined blood pressure of more than eight thousand five hundred patients. They evaluated ambulatory blood pressure readings with those who were taken by doctors and nurses. They found that level of blood pressure of the patients raised by twenty nine units when doctor took the measurement and rose by seventeen units when nurse took the measurement.
Variation in the blood pressure also depends upon the age and sex of the patient. Their study also found that the quicker the patient’s blood pressure to normal level then there is less difference between the readings taken through ambulatory monitoring and those taken by doctor or nurse.
To diagnose high blood pressure ambulatory blood pressure monitoring is the best option because if you are going to treat a person for the rest of his life then you want to get the right reading and often the reading in doctor’s cabin is mush higher, explains professor Arduino Mangoni from University of Aberdeen.
This research clearly demonstrates how external aspects like environment and who is checking blood pressure can have major impact on readings of blood pressure. Many people feel slightly nervous when going to see a doctor, so measuring blood pressure at home is encouraged always and use of home blood pressure monitors and ambulatory testing is encouraged explains Professor Graham MacGregor, chairman of the Blood Pressure Association.