[Arterial pressure variability in the acute phase of a cerebral stroke]

Acute stroke may cause hypertension and recently available devices for noninvasive blood pressure monitoring make it possible to study short-term variability of pressure in this condition.

Eight patients (5 males, 3 females, mean age 66 +/- 12 years) with haemorrhagic stroke and 13 male patients (mean age 73 +/- 10 years) with thrombo-embolic stroke underwent 24-hour blood pressure monitoring in the acute stage by the Takeda Medical 2420 (A&D Co., Japan), programmed to measure blood pressure every 10 min during day-time and 15 min during night-time. Blood pressure variability was measured by the variability coefficient (standard deviation/24 h mean). The diagnosis was confirmed in all cases by Computed Tomography scanning. Statistical differences between groups were evaluated by Student's "t" test for independent samples.

In haemorrhagic stroke the mean of variability coefficient proved be 10.7% for systolic and 12.8% for diastolic blood pressure, whereas in thromboembolic stroke it was 14.1% for systolic and 17.7% for diastolic blood pressure. The difference between means was statistically significant (p < 0.02 for systolic and p < 0.01 for diastolic blood pressure).

Blood pressure variability is greater in thrombo-embolic, than haemorrhagic stroke. The hypervariability can be misleading in judging the hypertensive state in this condition.