[Effectiveness of self-monitoring of blood pressure in white coat hypertension diagnosis. Rationale and design].

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effectiveness of blood pressure self-monitoring at home in front of 24-h blood pressure ambulatory measurement in isolated clinical hypertension diagnosis.
DESIGN: Comparative study of repeated measurements of self-monitoring home BP and 24-h ambulatory BP measurement in a hypertensive patients sample. SETTING AND SUBJECTS TO STUDY: Mild-moderate essential hypertensive patients newly diagnosed or previously diagnosed in which suspect isolated clinical hypertension (BP>140/90 mm Hg in clinical setting repeatedly). It needs a sample of 182 hypertensive patients seen at urban primary health care. PRINCIPAL MEASUREMENTS: We compute the isolated clinical hypertension prevalence, the sensibility, specificity and positive and negative predictive values, with 95% confidence intervals. DISCUSSION: Prove the effectiveness of blood pressure self-monitoring at home in insolated clinical hypertension diagnosis, can involve an important cost saving for health care system as in hypertensive patient management (medicines and office visits), as in diagnosis equipment.