How Shall We Analyse the Ambulatory Blood Pressure Signal

Can an internationally coordinated approach be formulated for the analysis of ambulatory invasive blood pressure recordings? This question is considered in regard to data storage,data presentation, analyser implementation and analyser performance specification. The methods used in several major centres are reviewed; there is already a good degree of standardisation of raw data recording methods, but as yet no consensus on data presentation. Analyser implementation is very unlikely to become unified. It would, however, be worthwhile to attempt to agree on ways of specifying the performance requirements for the central feature extraction algorithms, however implemented. At present very little quantitative data is available on the accuracy, repeatability or artefact rejection of the various analysers already being used.