Should home-based blood pressure monitoring be commonplace in NHS?

General Practitioners should encourage patients with hypertension to monitor their blood pressure at home and use those readings in their day-to-day care, recommend a team of experts writing in The Lancet. From the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Birmingham, the researchers report on a trial showing that when GPs base their medication adjustments on regular blood pressure readings taken by patients at home, blood pressure is significantly lower after 12 months when compared with those who are managed exclusively in the clinic. The NIHR-funded trial involved more than 1000 patients with poorly-controlled blood pressure, recruited through 142 general practices in England. Sometimes described as a 'silent killer', high blood pressure - also known as hypertension - affects more than 1 in 4 adults in England. While often preventable, it is a leading cause of cardiovascular disease and the biggest risk factor for death and disability internationally. Long-term hypertension control involves regular blood pressure checks by a health professional, so medication can be adjusted accordingly, yet this can be a challenge to manage in primary care despite the wide availability of effective treatments. Internationally, surveys have found up to 70% of people with hypertension self-monitor their blood pressure from home, yet in the UK this figure is much lower at around 30%.