Repeated ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM) may help to improve BP control in hypertensive pediatric renal transplant recipients, data suggest.
Rafael T. Krmar, MD, and Ulla B. Berg, MD, of Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge, Sweden, studied 87 patients who underwent renal transplantation between January 1, 1998, and December 31, 2005, and had hypertension.
These patients were divided into a study group of 37 patients (mean age 10.4 years) who had ABPM measurements obtained at yearly intervals after transplantation and a historical control group of 50 patients (mean age 5.9 years) in whom ABPM was used for the first time in 1998, six years following transplantation. Only this single measurement was used for comparison.
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In the study group, the mean follow-up period between baseline ABPM examination (one year post-transplant) and the most recent examination was 3.3 years. Antihypertensive therapy was either started or intensified in 27 patients based on ABPM results, according to a report in the American Journal of Hypertension (2008;21:1093-1099).
At last follow-up, 24 out of 29 treated hypertensive patients in the study group (83%) had controlled BP compared with 14 out of 46 controls (30%) treated on the basis of in-office BP monitoring.
