Does the sight of a doctor raise your BP? All you need to know about White Coat Hypertension

A common condition, White Coast Hypertension has many patients ending up recording elevated blood pressure in medical settings than during home monitoring

Hyderabad: The sight of a doctor’s white coat might reassure and comfort a patient. But inadvertently, it is this white coat only that could end up elevating the blood pressure and has the mercury rising in the sphygmomanometer.

A common condition, referred to as White Coat Hypertension (WCH), has many patients ending up recording an elevated blood pressure in medical settings than during home monitoring.

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WCH is believed to be the result of a patient experiencing anxiety during medical appointments and a reflex to having the blood pressure checked.

From reaching the health centre to entering the examination room and having the inflatable arm cuff wrapped, all could contribute to subconscious anxiety and take the blood pressure reading a few notches up.

Medical professionals attribute the syndrome to stress of a health check and fear of negative outcomes that patients nurture as they arrive at the hospital.

“A patient, while meeting a doctor, is a little stressed about his health condition and apprehensive as to what he will be diagnosed with and informed of,” explains Dr A Sreenivas Kumar, senior consultant cardiologist and director, Cardiology & Clinical Research, Apollo Hospitals.

 

This results in the blood pressure readings being more in the presence of white coats than what the patient could have monitored at home. The senior cardiologist says doctors take this possibility into consideration while assessing the health of a patient and coming up with a treatment plan.

“The WCH variation differs from patient-to-patient and on their levels of stress. The variation could be 20 millimetres of mercury (mmHg) to 30 mmHg or even more,” he says.

However, on the flipside, this variation is also seen as one that reveals the risk for hypertension in future. “WCH could also be a precursor for high blood pressure and its associated health complications in future,” he says.

Interestingly, Dr Sreenivas Kumar adds that WCH usually comes down to normal levels when the ‘doctor becomes old for a patient’. “When a patient is getting treated by a doctor over a period of time and their comfort levels go up, the White Coat Hypertension effects goes down,” he adds.