Call to Action on Use and Reimbursement for Home Blood Pressure Monitoring A Joint Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association American Society of Hypertension and the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses’ Association

摘要

The standard method for the measurement of blood pressure (BP) in clinical practice has traditionally been to use readings taken with the auscultatory technique by a physician or nurse in a clinic or office setting. While such measurements are likely to remain the cornerstone for the diagnosis and management of hypertension for the foreseeable future, it is becoming increasingly clear that they often give inadequate or even misleading information about a patient’s true BP status. All clinical measurements of BP may be regarded as surrogate estimates of the “True” BP, which may regarded as the average level over prolonged periods of time. In the past 30 years there has been an increasing trend to supplement office or clinic readings with out-of-office measurements of BP, taken either by the patient or a relative at home (home or self-monitoring- HBPM) or by an automated recorder for 24 hours (ambulatory blood pressure monitoring- ABPM).Of the two methods HBPM has the greatest potential for being incorporated into the routine care of hypertensive patients, in the same way that home blood glucose monitoring performed by the patient has become a routine part of the management of diabetes. The currently available monitors are relatively reliable, easy to use, inexpensive, and accurate, and are already being purchased in large numbers by patients. Despite this, their use has only been cursorily endorsed in current guidelines for the management of hypertension, and there have been no detailed recommendations as to how they should be incorporated into routine clinical practice. And despite the fact that there is strong evidence that HBPM can predict clinical outcomes and improve clinical care, the cost of the monitors is not generally reimbursed. It is the purpose of this Call to Action paper to address the issues of the incorporation of HBPM into the routine management of hypertensive patients and its reimbursement.