05/27/2002 By James Adams
Extent of nocturnal blood pressure decrease is not related to left ventricular morpho-functional characteristics, aortic distensibility or any other cardiovascular parameter in patients with essential hypertension.
The clinical significance of the nocturnal decrease and the value of classifying hypertension patients as “dippers” when the decrease is greater than 10 percent of the daytime blood pressure or “non-dippers” when the decrease is less than 10 percent has been questioned recently.
Investigators from the University of Insubria in Varese, Italy, evaluated the relationship between the extent of nocturnal blood pressure decrease and cardiovascular remodeling in 253 never-treated essential hypertension patients.
They recorded 24-hour blood pressures, left ventricular echocardiograms, Doppler transmitral flow velocities and carotid-femoral pulse-wave velocities from all the patients. One hundred sixty-one of the patients were classified as dippers and 92 were classified as non-dippers.
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