ABSTRACT
Klavs Würgler Hansen, 2Per Løgstrup Poulsen, 2Eva Ebbehøj, 2Søren Tang Knudsen and 2Carl Erik Mogensen Medical dept., Silkeborg Centralsygehus, DK-8600 Silkeborg,, 2) Medical dept. M, Aarhus kommunehospital, DK-8000 Aarhus
Ambulatory blood pressure (BP) measurement permits assessment of BP in the patients’ own surroundings, during normal daily activities on the job and in the night. Previously semiautomatic monitors were used, which required manually inflation of the cuff [1], or direct (intra-arterial) BP measurement [2]. The first true ambulatory 24-h report of indirectly measured BP obtained with a portable and fully automatic monitor was published in 1975 [3]
Rubler first reported the application of the technique to diabetic patients in 1982 using equipment weighing 3.07 kg [4]. The number of studies using ambulatory BP monitoring in diabetic patient in the eighties were moderate and with a few exceptions [4-7] focusing on autonomic neuropathy [8-13].
