All issues > Volume 51(1); 2008

Review Article

Korean J Pediatr. 2008;51(1):33-41. Published online January 15, 2008.

Normative blood pressure references for Korean children and adolescents

Chong Guk CG Lee¹, Jin Soo JS Moon¹, Joong-Myung JM Choi¹, Chung Mo CM Nam², Soon Young SY Lee², Kyungwon KW Oh³, Young Taek YT Kim³

¹The Committee for the Development of Growth Standard for Korean Children and Adolescents, The Committee for School Health and Public Health Statistics, The Korean Pediatric Society
²The Committee for the Development of Growth Standard for Korean Children and Adolescents
³The Committee for School Health and Public Health Statistics, The Korean Pediatric Society, Division of Chronic Disease Surveillance, Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Correspondence Chong Guk CG Lee ,Email: chonglee@ilsanpaik.ac.kr

Abstract

Purpose
: It is now understood that blood pressure (BP) measurement in the routine pediatric examination is very important because of the relevance of childhood BP to pediatric health care and the development of adult essential hypertension. There hasn't been a reference table of BP for Korean children and adolescents up to now. This study was to make normative BP references and to provide criteria of hypertension for Korean children and adolescents.
Methods
: BP measurements were done on 57,433 Koean children and adolescents (male: 29,443, female: 27,990), aged 7 to 20 years, in 2005. Heights and weights were measured simultaneously. Oscillometric devices, Dinamap Procare 200 (GE Inc., Milwaukee, Wi, USA), were used for the measurements. BPs were measured 2 times and mean levels were gathered for the analysis. Outliers of 2,373 subjects with overweight per height, over ＋3SD, were excluded for the analysis. For the BP centiles adjusted by sex, age and height, fixed modified LMS method which was adopted from the mixed effect model of 2004 Task Force in NHLBI (USA) was used.
Results
: Normative BP tables for Korean children and adolescents adjusted for height percentiles (5th, 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th, 95th), gender (male, female) and age(7 to 18 years) were completed. Height centiles of Korean children and adolescents are available from Korean Center for Disease Control and Prevention homepage, http://www.cdc.go.kr/webcdc/. Criteria of hypertension (95th, 99th percentile) and normal range of BP (50th, 90th) adjusted for height percentiles, age and gender were made.
Conclusion
: This is the first study to make normative BP tables and define hypertension for the Korean children and adolescents. Reliability and accuracy of Dinamap Procare 200 oscillometer for BP measurements remains debatable.

Keywords :Blood pressure, Hypertension, Oscillometric device, Dinamap