Prognostic Significance of an Overshooting Exercise Blood Pressure as an Indicator for Subsequent Manifestation of Hypertension

Ergometry provides the possibility of performing a stress test of the arterial blood pressure under defined conditions. Hollmann [2] was the first to initiate the development of an automatic blood pressure device adapted to exercise blood pressure measurement as early as the 1950s. Particular interest in exercise blood pressure was raised by the investigations of Franz [1]. Besides his studies, only one follow-up study about the prognostic significance of the exercise blood pressure is available [4]. Therefore, the opinions about the diagnostic value of an overshooting exercise blood pressure in relation to a subsequent manifestation of hypertension are still controversial. Particularly, data on patients with exercise hypertension but normal pressure at rest are not available. The investigations of Franz [1] are based on borderline hypertensive subjects, who were divided into “exercise-positive” and “exercise-negative” ones.