Reliability of patients measuring blood pressure at home: prospective observational study

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Abstract
We asked 54 consecutive patients with hypertension or suspected hypertension (aged 30-83 years), who had been referred for 24 hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, to measure their blood pressure at home twice daily between 0600 and 1000 for 30 days, and to record the time and readings. All agreed to participate. A nurse instructed each patient in the use of fully automated oscillometric blood pressure monitors with integrated memory devices (Omron-IC, Advance AG, Switzerland). To comply with the hospital's ethics committee, we informed patients (only cursorily) about the device's memory capacity. They were unaware that we would compare the device's stored measurements with their reported measurements. We classified measurements as correct if the timing of measurements (within 15 minutes) and single self reported values were identical to those recorded by the device, or if the average of multiple measurements differed by ≤3 mm Hg for systolic or diastolic pressure.