ABSTRACT
Background: White coat hypertension (WCH) is a common and well recognized phenomenon. It is also very prevalent amongst pregnant women and is often diagnosed as chronic/ gestational hypertension leading to unnecessary medications during pregnancy. ABPM is the gold standard for diagnosis of WCH. SBPM is an easy effective and reliable method to measure blood pressure but its efficacy needs to be tested and compared with ABPM in cases of WCH. It is important to compare the two methods in assessing WCH so SBPM can be utilized in cases of WCH, if found useful and efficacious.Methods: All pregnant women who presented to the ANC were screened for hypertension. Those who were diagnosed to be hypertensive in antenatal clinic and these patients were then admitted for ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) for 24 hours and SBPM on 6 hourly bases for 5 days.Results: The ABPM and SBPB readings were noted, tabulated and compared. It was found that the prevalence of ‘WCH’ in this study using ABPM and SBPM were 47.368% (27/54) and 45.614% (26/54) respectively.Conclusions: The results in diagnosing WCH using ABPM and SBPM were comparable.
ABSTRACT
Self-blood pressure monitoring (SBPM) at home creates greater awareness and patient participation in their treatment prevents hypertensive complications and helps facilitate doctors to make decisions on treatment. A study was conducted to assess the knowledge on self-blood pressure monitoring (SBPM) among hypertensive patients in selected wards of Hospital Lam Wah Ee, Malaysia. The results showed only 21 (32.3%) respondents monitored their blood pressure and 44 (67.7%) did not monitor their blood pressure at home. A total of 12 (18.4%) respondents reported that they monitored their blood pressure at home because they were aware of complications of hypertension. From those respondents who did not monitor blood pressure at home, only 13 (29.5%) respondents planned to carry out SBPM at home in the future. The overall knowledge score results for self-blood pressure monitoring showed that 6 (9.2%) subjects scored 8 and above, 42 (64.6%) scored 5-7, and 17 (26.1%) scored less than 4. The findings from the study will help the nurses understand the level of knowledge on SBPM among hypertensive patients, and include training and health education during hospitalisation reinforcing the importance and the technique of performing SBPM at home. It also helps to identify patients with poor control of blood pressure so that they can be referred to the physician for further treatment.