Ambulatory monitoring unmasks hypertension among kidney transplant patients: single center experience and review of the literature

BACKGROUND: Disagreements between clinic and ambulatory blood pressure (BP) measurements are well-described in the general population. Though hypertension is frequent in renal transplant recipients, only a few studies address the clinic-ambulatory discordance in this population. We aimed to describe the difference between clinic and ambulatory BP in kidney transplant patients at our institution. METHODS: We compared the clinic and ambulatory BP of 76 adult recipients of a kidney allograft followed at our transplant center and investigated the difference between these methods, considering confounding by demographic and clinical variables. RESULTS: Clinic systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP) were 128 ± 13/79 ± 9 mmHg. Awake SBP and DBP were 147 ± 18/85 ± 10 mmHg. The clinic-minus-awake SBP and DBP differences were − 18 and − 6 mmHg, respectively. The negative clinic-awake ΔSBP was more pronounced at age > 60 years (p = 0.026) and with tacrolimus use compared to cyclosporine (p = 0.046). Sleep SBP and DBP were 139 ± 21/78 ± 11 mmHg. A non-dipping sleep BP pattern was noted in 73% of patients and was associated with tacrolimus use (p = 0.020). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest pervasive underestimation of BP when measured in the kidney transplant clinic, emphasizes the high frequency of a non-dipping pattern in this population and calls for liberal use of ambulatory BP monitoring to detect and manage hypertension. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12882-019-1442-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.