Long-term reproducibility and evaluation of seasonal influences on blood pressure monitoring.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the long-term reproducibility and the possible seasonal influences on casual blood pressure and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring in patients with borderline or mild arterial hypertension. Two sets of measurements were performed at 6-month intervals, one set in the warm and one in the cold season, using the same protocol, consisting of measurements of casual and ambulatory blood pressures, together with the recording of outdoor temperatures. Casual blood pressure was measured by an automatic recorder and 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring was performed by a non-invasive device. For the selected intervals, the reproducibility of most pressure measurements was low; in addition, casual diastolic pressure and 24-h systolic and diastolic pressures were significantly higher in the cold than in the warm season. Taken together, these findings confirm and extend the results obtained in several large-scale studies and support the importance of taking environmental temperature into account, not only in epidemiological studies but also in small-scale studies and probably even in the individual patients, especially when using integrated evaluations by ambulatory monitoring.