A study of Blood Pressure in school going children (5-15 years age group)

Abstract

Background: Recording of blood pressure in children below 3 years of age is not carried out routinely. But measurement of blood pressure should be a routine part of clinical examination of children over 3 years of age. Routine measurement of blood pressure in infants, children and adolescents is needed for identification of affected children before the development of symptoms and will allow taking measure for prevention of complications due to hypertension. Objective: To determine the normal distribution of blood pressure in the pediatric population and relation with age, sex, weight, height & socioeconomic status of children. Methodology: This is a prospective cross-sectional study done from July 2017 to June 2018 with sample size of 532 school going children including both sexes. Between the age group of 5-15 year were included and grouped into three. Children with renal diseases and family history of hypertension were excluded.  Result: This study showed that 0.9% of children had both SBP and DBP were above 95^th percentile for age. For higher, middle and lower social class the prevalence was 1.7, 0.8 and 0.6 respectively. The prevalence is almost equal in both sexes. Conclusion: Measurements of blood pressure over a period of time in children should be done during the course of their continuous care and should not be ignored. Periodic health check up with intervention is needed where there are established consistent and significant observations