What considerations should be made when implementing ABPM for the monitoring of treatment of hypertension in children?
Implementation of ABPM for monitoring treatment of hypertension is challenging. Some of the considerations that should be made include: difficulty wearing the monitors and completing the full 24 hours of measurements, lack of availability when needed, parent or other adult returning the monitor to the clinic, and the expense. Additionally, there are certain situations in which there is a low probability of finding elevated BP by ABPM, such as when individuals have clinic BP at #25th percentile. Additionally, there are additional challenges on how these guidelines apply to children who are too young to undergo ABPM or to children <120 centimeters in height, for whom no normative ABPM data exist.