Nocturnal blood pressure surge in seconds is a new determinant of left ventricular mass index

Nocturnal blood pressure (BP) surge in seconds (sec-surge), which is characterized as acute transient BP elevation over several tens of seconds, could be a predictor of target organ damage. However, it is not clear that the severity of sec-surge is different between sec-surges induced by sleep apnea (SA) (apnea/hypopnea detected by polysomnography (PSG) or oxygen desaturation) and those induced by non-SA factors (rapid eye movement, micro arousal, etc.), and sec-surge variables associate with left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) independently of conventional BP variables. The authors assessed these points with 41 patients (mean age 63.2±12.6 years, 29% female) who underwent full PSG, beat-by-beat (BbB) BP, and cuff-oscillometric BP measurement during the night. All patients were included for the analysis comparing sec-surge severity between inducing factors (SA and non-SA factors). There were no significant differences in the number of sec-surges/night between SA-related sec-surges and non-SA-related sec-surges (19.5±26.0 vs. 16.4±29.8 events/night). There were also no significant differences in the peak of sec-surges, defined as the maximum systolic BPs (SBPs) in each sec-surge, between SA-related sec-surges and non-SA-related sec-surges (148.2±18.5 vs. 149.3±19.2 mm Hg). Furthermore, as a result of multiple regression analysis (n = 18), the peak of sec-surge was significantly and strongly associated with the left ventricular mass index (standardized β = 0.62, p =.02), compared with the mean nocturnal SBPs measured by oscillometric method (β = −0.04, p =.87). This study suggests that peak of sec-surge could be a better predictor of LVH compared to parameters derived from regular nocturnal oscillometric SBP.