A 30-minute office-based automated blood pressure measurement is as effective at identifying white coat hypertension and sustained hypertension as conventional daytime ambulatory blood pressure measurement (ABPM), according to a Dutch study. 'The authors support the use of ABPM and home blood pressure monitoring but point out that these methods are not without problems. Patient compliance can affect home blood pressure monitoring and ABPM is laborious, costly and not tolerated by all patients. They accept that any clinic-based method will be unable to identify diurnal blood pressure patterns, blood pressure variability, and mean nocturnal blood pressure but conclude that their protocol is as accurate as daytime ABPM and will be more cost effective and tolerable. You may wonder how a busy practice could set aside a room for such monitoring on a regular basis but given the trend towards ABPM as a first-line investigation in hypertension this could be a more cost-effective solution.'