With this name the doctors referred patients with high blood figures in the office but normal when viewed at home. What of “white coat” comes from the distinctive that all doctors and nurses have been in their jobs.
It might seem that this is a rare problem, but in clinical practice is something you find with some regularity, experts say.
The causes are often anxious type. The person who comes to consultation, already knows that he will talk about an important issue for her: her health. As in any situation “threatening” or generating an alarm, the body releases a series of blood hormones and several substances whose mechanism of action includes the contraction of blood vessels. Consequently, blood pressure rises.
Is there a diagnostic test that allows to know that we have a patient with white coat hypertension?
To determine whether a patient suffers from white coat hypertension, using a diagnostic test called MAP (ambulatory blood pressure monitoring), to find out how that is achieved has been the tension during a normal day (24 hours). The test lets see if at some point up the tension, and attempt to relate this rise to any particular circumstance (the person is just waking up, or goes to work).
We speak because of white coat hypertension in those individuals where the map shows that the tension is well controlled and yet it comes to consultation and get high.
