Reproducibility of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring results in pregnancy

Blood pressure (BP) differences between two consecutive 24-h monitoring periods (P1, P2) were analyzed in 159 hospitalized pregnant women. Reproducibility index, or twice the standard deviation of differences between individual systolic and diastolic means, was better for 24-h (7.8 and 5.8) and daytime (8.7 and 6.3) than for nighttime (12.2 and 9.7) BP means. It did not depend on BP level or gestation week. Alert reaction to monitoring procedure increased BP only in the first 2 h of P1. The high overall reproducibility of ambulatory BP in pregnancy supports the expanding use of the technique also in this condition.