Blood pressure nomograms for children and adolescents, by height, sex, and age, in the United States.

Because height is a more appropriate index of maturation than weight for use with normative blood pressure (BP) data, we developed normative BP levels for children, by sex, while accounting for age and height simultaneously. Eight U.S. studies used in the Report of the Second Task Force on Blood Pressure Control in Children and one additional study of BP in U.S. children were reanalyzed to develop age-sex-height-specific values for normative BP values among 56,108 children, aged 1 to 17 years, seen at 76,018 visits. Height percentiles were computed on the basis of standard National Center for Health Statistics growth charts. When height is taken into account, more short children (10th age-sex-specific height percentile) and fewer tall children (90th age-sex-specific height percentile) are likely to be classified as hypertensive than when the current age-sex-specific percentiles of BP alone are used. Tables are provided for boys and girls separately, by single year of age (1 to 17 years) and by the 90th and 95th percentiles of systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure (fifth phase of Korotkoff sounds) for selected age-sex-specific height percentiles based on standard U.S. growth charts.