[Pulse wave velocity and ambulatory blood pressure in essential arterial hypertension].

Cardiovascular morbidity and mortality of hypertensive patients is mainly related to lesions of large arteries. Arterial distensibility estimated by carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) was evaluated in 22 patients with sustained essential hypertension, together with three different methods of blood pressure (BP) measurement: mercury sphygmomanometer, semi-automatic BP recording using the Dinamap apparatus and 24 H ambulatory BP monitoring using the Spacelabs Monitor (5200). Table shows that, while PWV was not correlated with BP measured by mercury sphygmomanometer, it was strongly and positively correlated with BP measured by the other procedures. The best correlation coefficient was noted for the systolic BP measured in the Day Time (7 h-22 h) by the ambulatory method. This study shows that BP Monitoring correlates more strongly than clinic or casual BP with indices of target organ damage. (Table: see text).