[Does the blood pressure balance obtained in hospitalized hypertensive patients remain satisfactory a month later at home? (Ambulatory measurement)].

: Twenty patients with hypertensive heart disease have been hospitalised for adjustment of their antihypertensive medication. The new treatment was left unchanged during a period of forty days, the survey consisted in three blood pressure measurements at rest every day during the first ten days of hospitalisation and an ambulatory blood pressure measurement the 10th and 40th day. The 10th day, there is no significant correlation between blood pressures measured at rest and ambulatory, even if the average BP levels are not significantly different. The 40th day, the average BP levels are equivalent with a correlation coefficient of 0.5 for the systolic and 0.64 for the diastolic blood pressure (p less than 0.01). Thus, a measurement of the ambulatory BP at the 10th day of hospitalisation seems to be a good indicator of the expected long term therapeutic effect. However, absence of greater increase of the ambulatory BP at one month probably corresponds with the majored action of certain treatments as time goes by.