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Absolute height-specific thresholds to identify elevated blood pressure in children.
Arnaud Chiolero1, Gilles Paradis, Giacomo D Simonetti
1Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine IUMSP, University Hospital Center, 1010 Lausanne, Switzerland. arnaud.chiolero@chuv.ch
Journal of Hypertension
|April 5, 2013
Summary
A new, simple height-specific blood pressure (BP) threshold table effectively identifies elevated BP in children. This approach offers high sensitivity and specificity, simplifying pediatric hypertension screening.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Cardiology
- Public Health
- Clinical Diagnostics
Background:
- Identifying children with elevated blood pressure (BP) is challenging due to complex sex, age, and height-specific criteria.
- Existing BP thresholds require multiple charts, complicating accurate diagnosis in pediatric populations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and evaluate simple, absolute height-specific BP thresholds for identifying elevated BP in children.
- To assess the performance of these new thresholds in diverse pediatric populations.
Main Methods:
- Derived absolute height-specific BP thresholds in 10 cm increments, independent of sex and age.
- Evaluated threshold performance using data from large school-based surveys in Switzerland and the Seychelles.
- Compared performance of non-sex-specific and sex-specific absolute height-specific BP thresholds.
Main Results:
- The proposed height-specific thresholds demonstrated high sensitivity (80-84%) and excellent specificity (99%) in identifying elevated BP.
- Prevalence of elevated BP was 11.4% in Switzerland and 9.1% in the Seychelles using standard criteria.
- Sex-specific absolute height-specific thresholds showed similar performance to non-sex-specific ones.
Conclusions:
- A straightforward table of height-specific BP thresholds can reliably identify children with elevated BP.
- This simplified approach achieves high diagnostic accuracy, aiding in pediatric hypertension screening.
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