Long-Term Reproducibility of Routine Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring in Stable Pediatric Renal Transplant Recipients

Background The aim of this study was to evaluate, in stable pediatric renal transplant recipients, the long-term reproducibility of average office and ambulatory blood pressure (BP) readings and day-to-night BP variability under similar clinical conditions. Methods The study involved 18 pediatric kidney transplant recipients who had repeated routine office and 24-h ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM) in three visits, 12 months apart, over a 2-year period. Reproducibility of office and ambulatory BP averages between pairwise measurements were analyzed by calculating the mean difference and the standard deviation of the difference (SDD). Nondippers were arbitrarily defined by applying both a pediatric and an adult definition, respectively. Results Throughout the 2-year period, there were no significant differences in mean office, 24-h, daytime, night-time systolic, and diastolic BP values. Overall, SDD were lower for ambulatory BP recordings than for office BP measurements indicating a better long-term reproducibility for ABPM compared with office BP readings. The SDD for systolic and diastolic BP ranged from 12.4 to 13.7 and 6.3 to 9.5 for office BP and from 6.2 to 7.3 and 5.1 to 5.6 for 24-h BP, respectively. Regardless of the definition applied to define dipper and nondipper status, only half of the study group showed consistency in their circadian BP variability when comparing the three ABPMs. Conclusions The present study demonstrates that long-term reproducibility of ABPM is superior to that for office measurements. Day-to-night BP variability, however, appears to change over time, making it questionable to classify a recipient as a dipper or nondipper during a single ABPM recording.