Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring in Children

Recently there have been great advances in the use of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) in children. A major boost has been the publication of normative data for blood pressure in children. ABPM has been able to detect significant differences in blood pressure in many disease states including chronic renal failure, polycystic kidney disease and post renal transplantation and has helped in identifying both white coat hypertension and masked hypertension. Current evidence does suggest that sole reliance on clinic blood pressure might not be always appropriate and ABPM has a definite role in pediatric hypertension.