Does Brachial Blood Pressure Need to Predict Cardiovascular Outcomes in End Stage Renal Disease? An Update

Hypertension is responsible for a significantly increased burden of cardiovascular events and it is cause and a consequence of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and a determinant factor in its progression to End Stage Kidney Disease (ESKD). Therefore, nephrologists have been focusing their attention on hypertension control to prevent CKD progression, delaying it but with poor results on cardiovascular mortality reduction. An important effect is the difficulty to adequately reduce BP levels in CKD patients and especially in dialysis patients despite the polipharmacological therapy. We have to take into account other aspects influencing mortality risk in CKD patients. The first aspect to consider is whether brachial blood pressure (BP) measurement is sufficient to describe the complex relationship between the alteration of BP and outcomes in renal subjects. The second aspect to consider is the variability of BP (BPV). We think that BP measurement cannot only take into account brachial B P, because it represents a limited measure of a complex clinical condition in CKD or ESRD patients. The inability to evaluate hypertension in its complexity explains why several aspects are still unrecognized.