Self-monitoring of blood pressure at home leads to better control over high blood pressure than does standard monitoring at the doctor's office, according to a report in the American Journal of Hypertension.
Because there has been some disagreement regarding the effectiveness of home monitoring, Dr Ilkka Kantola, from Turku University Hospital in Finland, and colleagues conducted a study involving 55 primary health care centers.
A group of 113 patients measured blood pressure at home using an automated device twice daily for 7 days and then again at 2, 4, and 6 months, and the results were returned to the patients' physicians. A comparison group of 119 patients had blood pressure measured in their primary care providers' offices at the same time periods. The doctors in both groups were instructed to intensify treatment if the target blood pressure was not met.