Daytime ambulatory blood pressure correlates strongly with the echocardiographic diameter of aortic coarctation

Objective-To relate the echocardiographic aortic arch-diameter to ambulator y and clinic blood pressure (BP) in patients with aortic coarctation. Design-Eighteen adult patients (50% men) were recruited from the coarctatio n registry of the Linkoping Heart Centre. Biplane-trans-oesophageal echocar diography (TEE) was performed with Acuson XP 128/10, ambulatory BP was reco rded with Spacelab models 90202/90205. Results-Systolic clinic and ambulatory BP levels were higher in patients th an in the 36 controls (clinic BP: 146 +/- 25 mmHg vs 119 +/- 10 mmHg, p = 0 .0009, ambulatory BP: 140 +/- 18 mmHg vs 124 +/- 11 mmHg, p = 0.009). The d ifferences in diastolic BP levels were less obvious (clinic BP: 87 +/- 16 m mHg vs 76 +/- 8 mmHg, p = 0.02, ambulatory BP: 84 +/- 13 mmHg vs 77 +/- 9 m mHg, p = 0.052). Daytime ambulatory BP was more strongly related than clini c BP to the coarctation diameter (AD) (systolic BP r = -0.73, p = 0.0006 an d r = -0.61, P = 0.007, respectively). In surgically corrected patients (n = 14) only the correlations between ambulatory systolic daytime (r = -0.61, p = 0.02) and night-time (r = -0.58, p = 0.03) BP to AD was statistically significant. Conclusion-Ambulatory BP correlates strongly with aortic coarctation measur ed by TEE and would thus be the preferred technique for evaluating BP in th is patient category.