I'm an MSc student researching into the variability seen in bp readings when patients go to the clinic multiple times. There's a lot of research at the moment that suggests the variability in multiple clinic bp readings and indeed the max. bp reading is a better predictor of stroke or coronary events compared to just the mean. I'd like to know please how seriously medics take the prognostic value of bp variability these days? I don't know any medics myself but I'm hoping if anyone has any contacts or researches in the area, they might be able to shed some light on this for me please?
Also when a lot of this research talks about variation, they specifically mean systolic blood pressure as no such link has really been found between diastolic pressure and predicting vascular events. Does anyone know why diastolic variation doesn't seem to be as important as systolic variation please?
I believe once this variability is noted, it is better to have well documented ambulatory BP monitor for 24 hours.
This will have a much useful information and guide drug therapy types, doses and timings.
Sometimes the variability is due to patients' intermittent adherence to prescribed BP medications which obviously increases the risk for cardiovascular complications.