Ambulatory blood pressure

Ambulatory blood pressure, as opposed to office blood pressure and home blood pressure, is the blood pressure over the course of the full 24-hour sleep-wake cycle. Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) measures blood pressure at regular intervals throughout the day and night. It avoids the white coat hypertension effect in which a patient's blood pressure is elevated during the examination process due to nervousness and anxiety caused by being in a clinical setting. ABPM can also detect the reverse condition, masked hypertension, where the patient has normal blood pressure during the examination but uncontrolled blood pressure outside the clinical setting, masking a high 24-hour average blood pressure. Out-of-office measurements are highly recommended as an adjunct to office measurements by almost all hypertension organizations.

Blood pressure variability

24-hour, non-invasive ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitoring allows estimates of cardiac risk factors including excessive BP variability or patterns of circadian variability known to increase risks of a cardiovascular event.

Nocturnal hypertension

Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring allows blood pressure to be intermittently monitored during sleep and is useful to determine whether the patient is a "dipper" or "non-dipper"—that is to say, whether or not blood pressure falls at night compared to daytime values. A nighttime fall is normal and desirable. It correlates with relationship depth, and also other factors such as sleep quality, age, hypertensive status, marital status, and social network support. Absence of a nighttime dip is associated with poorer health outcomes; a 2011 study found increased mortality.