Standards for ambulatory blood pressure monitoring clinical reporting in daily practice: recommendations from the Italian Society of Hypertension

This paper aims to provide practical indications to healthcare professionals and manufacturers of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) devices on the characteristics and minimum required contents of a standard ABPM report to be used in the clinical practice. Such indications will help make ABPM reports more easily interpretable and independent from the ABPM device and software used. The first important and unavoidable step of ABPM reporting is a quality assessment: if a recording does not meet the minimum requirements for quality criteria, the reporting physician should advise the patient to repeat the test and should not further proceed to a diagnostic evaluation and interpretation of the recording. A basic clinical report must contain the list of each single reading, the graphical display of individual readings and hourly average values, the mean, minimum and maximum values, and SDs of blood pressure and heart rate values for the 24h, daytime and night-time, day-night differences, and blood pressure loads. The final medical report should be prepared in a quite logically structured way, considering the following: (i) a judgment on the overall quality of the 24h recording; (ii) an indication of whether average 24h, daytime and night-time systolic, and diastolic blood pressure values are within or above the normal limits; and (iii) a description of the 24h pattern of blood pressure fluctuations. A final general statement on the normotensive or hypertensive status and on the degree of blood pressure control in case of treated patients should also be provided.