Can a home blood pressure monitor give an accurate assessment of your blood pressure? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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You’ve been told you have high blood pressure and now need confirmation. Can you accomplish that goal with a home blood pressure monitor? Greg Prokopowicz, a blood pressure expert at Johns Hopkins, says the latest guidelines say you can.

Prokopowicz: There’s been a greater acknowledgement that home blood pressure monitoring is probably going to be where we should focus our energy. The current guidelines recommend getting an office reading and then confirming it with home readings, so that’s a sensible recommendation, because there are a lot of people who will have a high reading in the office due to the stress of the environment, maybe they’re not given an adequate chance to relax before their blood pressure is measured, and their home readings would be completely normal. And we don’t want to put those people on medications, so it is really important to do that.  :32

Prokopowicz says a home monitor also helps make sure your medicines are working to keep blood pressure under control. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.