What are The Advantages Of Self-Monitoring of Blood Pressure?
A. The readings taken by a doctor during an office visit are increasingly regarded as providing a very poor estimate of what someone’s blood pressure level really is- the true blood pressure. The main advantage of self-monitoring is that it provides a better estimate of the true pressure. It does this in two ways: first, by increasing the number of readings that can be taken, and second, by avoiding the white coat effect, which makes the pressure go up by an unpredictable amount during the office visit. When patients first start taking their blood pressure, they are frequently astonished at how variable it is, and no less frequently worried about the few readings that seem excessively high. In the same way as the saying one swallow doesn’t make a summer, one high reading does not make a diagnosis of hypertension.
