What are the benefits of using ABPM in children with CKD?
A number of reviews and guidelines suggest that in children with CKD, ABPM is a particularly useful tool to assess BP patterns. ABPM can be particularly useful, as a significant number of patients have masked hypertension and would not be recognized as having hypertension based on the outpatient measurements only. A few studies using ABPM in patients with CKD suggest that it may give a better measure of overall BP and better indicate risk for kidney disease progression than office BP measurement. Additionally, ABPM allows the practitioner to compute the mean BP during the day, night, and over 24 hours, as well as to assess the time in which BP exceeds the upper limit of the normal range (i.e., the BP load). Further research may elucidate that future guidelines for therapy should be based on ABPM, rather than office based measures that are commonly used today.