Whether the blood pressure measurement is done by the physician, laboratory technician, nurse, or the patient himself, especially if the physician has a busy office practice and no time for more than one blood pressure measurement.
In the "Patients and Methods" section of their article, the authors stated that "the physician blood pressure readings were taken by a male physician with a conventional mercury sphygmomanometer, and these readings were the averages of at least two visits, separated by at least two weeks, excluding the patients' first visit to the center." Therefore, I assume that only one reading was taken at each visit; the averaging of at least two visits excluding the first visit will not solve the problem, as both readings might be elevated. Such a problem, of course, would not occur with ambulatory monitoring in which multiple readings are taken.
To the Editor.
—Pickering and colleagues1 described "white