The role of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring in elderly hypertensive patients.

There is strong evidence that ambulatory blood pressure measurements show only limited agreement with blood pressures measured in the clinic ("office" blood pressures), and are more relevant to the prognosis of hypertension. Several markers of end-organ damage, for example, have been shown to correlate more strongly with 24-h blood pressure than with office blood pressure. In addition, end-organ damage has been shown to be correlated with 24-h blood pressure variability. Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) has revealed a number of differences between the blood pressure profiles of elderly and younger patients. Since 24-h blood pressure control is now widely accepted as an important goal of antihypertensive therapy, ABPM has a potentially useful role in monitoring treatment in clinical trials in elderly patients.