Home checks for blood pressure

Guidelines published by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) recommend that patients should be monitored for 24 hours to determine if they have high blood pressure.

This process, ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM), involves wearing a cuff and a box on a belt for a day as the patient goes about their daily life, to give a series of readings under normal conditions.

Currently patients have a number of appointments to have their blood pressure checked, and it is estimated that 25 per cent suffer from “white-coat hypertension” – nervousness when seeing medical staff – which will cause a high reading.

Cathy Ross, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: “The number of people with high blood pressure in the UK is staggering. It’s a major risk factor for heart disease and strokes so it’s crucial we do all we can to get people diagnosed and properly treated as soon as possible.”