Ambulatory blood pressure. An independent predictor of prognosis in essential hypertension.

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Abstract
To determine the prognostic significance of ambulatory blood pressure, we prospectively followed for up to 7.5 years (mean, 3.2) 1187 subjects with essential hypertension and 205 healthy normotensive control subjects who had baseline off-therapy 24-hour noninvasive ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. Prevalence of white coat hypertension, defined by an average daytime ambulatory blood pressure lower than 131/86 mm Hg in women and 136/87 mm Hg in men in clinically hypertensive subjects, was 19.2%. Cardiovascular morbidity, expressed as the number of combined fatal and nonfatal cardiovascular events per 100 patient-years, was 0.47 in the normotensive group, 0.49 in the white coat hypertension group, 1.79 in dippers with ambulatory hypertension, and 4.99 in nondippers with ambulatory hypertension. After adjustment for traditional risk markers for cardiovascular disease, morbidity did not differ between the normotensive and white coat hypertension groups (P = .83). Compared with the white coat hypertension ...