Abstract
Scipione Riva-Rocci first observed that the standard measurement of blood pressure (BP) triggered an alerting reaction and a pressor rise (1). These observations were subsequently confirmed (2). Mancia et al. demonstrated that the average rise in intra-arterial BP during clinical visit is of 27/14 mmHg, that the rise is maximal during the first 4 minutes of the visit, disappears within about 10 minutes and persists over several visits (3–5). The transient pressor rise during clinical visit is referred to as ‘white-coat effect’ or ‘white-coat phenomenon’ (6), while the coexistence of persistently high office BP with normal BP outside the medical setting is often referred to as ‘white-coat’ (7) or ‘office’ (8) hypertension. The white-coat effect is usually calculated as the difference between clinic BP and average daytime ambulatory BP (9–10).
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Verdecchia, P., Schillaci, G., Borgioni, C., Ciucci, A., Porcellati, C. (2000). White-Coat Hypertension: State of the Art. In: Osterhues, HH., Hombach, V., Moss, A.J. (eds) Advances in Noninvasive Electrocardiographic Monitoring Techniques. Developments in Cardiovascular Medicine, vol 229. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4090-4_33
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