Stella Stabouli, Vasileios Kotsis
Abstract
High blood pressure during childhood and adolescence has evolved as a significant health issue with regard to population cardiovascular health. Guidelines on the diagnosis and management of high BP in children and adolescents aim to offer evidence-based guidance to the primary care physician with regard to screening, diagnosis, evaluation and treatment of high BP in routine clinical practice.In the era of updated guidelines the primary care physician has to familiarize with new definitions, normative data, BP measurement techniques, and treatment algorithms. In addition, controversies between guidelines may add further difficulty in implementation of recommendations into routine clinical practice and may result in disproportional management of BP levels among pediatric populations. The aims of this review is to discuss practical points for the screening, diagnosis, laboratory investigation of high BP in children and adolescents based on the 2016 European Society Hypertension and the 2017 American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines, and to evaluate rational approaches based at large on the similarities between the guidelines.
Keywords: Blood pressure, Hypertension, Children, Adolescents, Screening, Diagnosis, Treatment