Open AccessImproving Hypertension Screening in Childhood Using Modified Blood Pressure to Height Ratio
Author(s) -
Dong Bin,
Wang Zhiqiang,
Wang HaiJun,
Ma Jun
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the journal of clinical hypertension
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.909
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1751-7176
pISSN - 1524-6175
DOI - 10.1111/jch.12712
Subject(s) - medicine , prehypertension , blood pressure , youden's j statistic , receiver operating characteristic , cutoff , essential hypertension , cardiology , diastole , area under the curve , pediatrics , physics , quantum mechanics
Blood pressure to height ratio ( BPHR ) has been suggested as a simple method for screening children with hypertension, but its discriminatory ability in young children is not as good as that in older children. Using data of 89,664 Chinese children aged 7 to 11 years, the authors assessed whether modified BPHR ( BP : eHT 13) was better than BPHR in identifying young children with hypertension. BP : eHT 13 was estimated as BP /(height+7×(13−age in years)). Using Youden's index, the thresholds of systolic/diastolic BP : eHT 13 for identifying prehypertension and hypertension were 0.67/0.44 and 0.69/0.45, respectively. These proposed thresholds revealed high sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value, and area under the curve ( AUC ), ranging from 0.874 to 0.999. In addition, BP : eHT 13 showed better AUC s and fewer cutoff points than, if not similar to, two existing BPHR references. BP : eHT 13 generally performed better than BPHR in discriminating BP abnormalities in young children and may improve early hypertension recognition and control.