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 researchers, including Professor Jonathan Mant, Professor of Primary Care Research at the Primary Care Unit who is a co-author of the article published in The Lancet, this week.

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 randomised controlled trial involved more than 1000 patients with poorly-controlled blood pressure, recruited through 142 general practices in England.

“16 million people in the UK have high blood pressure and should be offered the option of self-monitoring to control their hypertension.” – Professor Jonathan Mant, Professor of Primary Care Research at the Primary Care Unit.

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