Blood Pressure (High) in Children and Adolescents: Screening

1. Test accuracy of blood pressure measurements with sphygmomanometers or oscillometric automated devices and establishing thresholds for hypertension for 24-hour ambulatory monitoring.
2. Application of new thresholds for determining abnormal blood pressure to existing data sets and testing the validity of these thresholds.
3. Benefits and harms of long-term pharmacologic treatment. Studies should have long-term follow-up of several months or years across various age groups because benefits and harms of treatments may be age dependent and hypertension in children may be self-limiting.
4. Benefits and harms of screening and treatment should also include children at increased risk, such as Black and Hispanic/Latino populations.
5. Long-term natural history of hypertension in children and the spontaneous resolution of hypertension.
6. Associations among childhood hypertension, adulthood hypertension, and surrogate measures of cardiovascular disease in childhood and adulthood, as well as adulthood clinical cardiovascular disease.
7. Effect of individual components of multifactorial interventions.

The USPSTF concludes that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening for high blood pressure in children and adolescents.

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