Recruitment
Pregnant women visiting the outpatient clinic of the Radboudumc in
Nijmegen, the Netherlands, were eligible for inclusion. For both parts
of this study patients were separately included. All women lived in
Nijmegen and surroundings, were over the age of eighteen, provided
written informed consent, had all of their regular pregnancy check-ups
to the Radboudumc and had a blood pressure of 80-190 mmHg systolic and
30-140 mmHg diastolic. Women with diagnosed arrhythmia, edema in the
arms or unable to give their written informed consent in Dutch were
excluded.
Phase 1
For this phase we included women with a gestational age over 30 weeks,
as this period of pregnancy is accompanied by the largest variability in
blood pressure and most hypertensive disorders occur in this period. We
aimed for an inclusion of at least 30 women in line with the ESH-IP 2010
protocol.
Phase 2
In this phase we included women of all gestation ages to evaluate home
versus office blood pressure measurements from the first to third
trimester. We aimed for an inclusion of at least 30 women as well.