Assessment of antihypertensive efficacy by non-invasive ambulatory blood pressure monitoring

The session devoted to the usefulness of non-invasive ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) in the evaluation of antihypertensive therapy allowed us to discuss a number of important issues. ABPM emerged as a widely accepted technique to measure blood pressure in clinical trials. Actually, it was generally considered to provide more valuable information than do conventional blood pressure readings obtained sporadically by a doctor. However, still debated was the way of analysing ABPM recordings. This was particularly true with respect to the proposal of considering separately responders and non-responders when assessing the quality of blood pressure control achieved during treatment.