Lay-Flurrie SL, Sheppard JP, Stevens RJ, et al. - Given that out-of-office blood pressure monitoring for diagnosing hypertension has been recommended by national and international guidelines recently, and although there exists evidence of cost-effectiveness, critics stated concerns this would increase cardiovascular morbidity, and therefore, researchers evaluated the influence of these alterations on the incidence of hypertension, out-of-office monitoring, and cardiovascular morbidity. For this purpose, they utilized routine clinical data from English general practices, connected to inpatient hospital, death, and socio-economic status data. Overall 3,937,191 adults were analyzed over a median duration of 4.2 years. They reported a decline in the incidence of hypertension from 2.1 to 1.4 per 100 person-years during the study period. The alteration in guidance in 2011 was not related to an immediate change in incidence but did cause a leveling out of the downward trend. Overall, a stabilization in incidence and no rise in cardiovascular events were reported in relation to changes to hypertension guidelines in 2011. Based on these findings, experts concluded that guidelines should continue to advise out-of-office monitoring for the diagnosis of hypertension.