{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01732283464566929, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0007874015748031496, 'mean_word_length': 5.724867724867725, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring in clinical practice.

In this issue of the journal, Palatini [1] summarizes the evidence that ambulatory blood pressure monitoring is superior to clinical blood pressure in the diagnostic and prognostic evaluation of hypertensive patients. However, some inherent limitations of the techniques employed for ambulatory blood pressure monitoring are also emphasized, including the likelihood of artefactual readings which are often disregarded in the context of an uncritical use in clinical practice. On this background, the current indications for ambulatory blood pressure monitoring in hypertension (e.g. the identification of patients with isolated office hypertension) are discussed vis-à-vis the possible role of alternative approaches, and somewhat negative conclusions are reached. That is, that ambulatory blood pressure monitoring does not have clear advantages over multiple clinical measurements or self blood pressure monitoring at home. As a consequence, a suggestion is made to limit the clinical use of ambulatory blood pressure recording only to those expert centres able to guarantee high quality tracings and an appropriate interpretation of the results, and to restrict its application to carefully selected cases.