Ups and Downs of Hypertension

Hypertension is a growing pandemic in the world and causes 7 million deaths annually. In Iran, about 10 million people have hypertension. Hypertension is an important risk factor for other diseases. Therefore monitoring & evaluation of blood pressure (BP) has clinical & epidemiologic importance. Although there has been lot of breakthroughs in diagnosis & treatment of HTN, only few patients merit an adequate blood pressure control. On the other hand, white coat syndrome has caused an inadvertent administration of anti-hypertensive drugs, inflicting unnecessary drug complications on the patients. Therefore, constant self blood pressure measurements in home seems indispensable to achieve a true presentation of BP and subsequently a depiction of BP rises and falls though graphs. This article employed data from original articles of renowned journals and the corresponding author. Daily fluctuations of BP, nocturnal falls, heart rate fluctuations and BP rises herald crucial information regarding renal and cardiovascular accidents. BP monitoring during physical activities such as exercise stress test, reveal diseases that may be still in subclinical stages. These information are of utmost importance in prognosis and risk assessment of high risk patients with diabetes, heart failure and chronic renal disease. In addition, they could be established for recording subclinical events in occupational hazards in army personnel’s, flight personnel’s, military commanders, security service personnel’s and other stressful professions. in this article, we established a review on the subject and a practical approach in BP monoitoring from the clinical epidemiologic prospective.