Adjuvante Therapie von arterieller Hypertonie durch hochfrequentes Blutdruckbiofeedback

Introduction: A lack of studies on the effects of continuous blood
pressure biofeedback led to the development of a screening and
feedback software allowing for a `beat-to-beat' representation of
arterial blood pressure. Through this method patients find that
they can exert some control of their blood pressure. Patients and
Methods: For evaluation purposes a pilot study was conducted with
84 hypertensive patients at the Klinik Hohenried, Germany. Two
experimental groups which received the normal treatment program of
the hospital and an additional 2 (20 patients) or 3-6 (22 patients)
biofeedback sessions, respectively, were compared with one control
group treated additionally with pseudo biofeedback (20 patients)
and another control group (22 patients) which underwent the clinic
program without biofeedback. Results: Both experimental groups
yielded significantly more markedly blood pressure reductions (MAP)
than the controls (p = 0.001), but patients who received 3-6
feedback sessions did not perform significantly better than
patients who received only 2 sessions (p = 0.517). Conclusions: 2
sessions of feedback treatment can already have clinically relevant
effects. This suggests a major influence of cognitive processes
such as self-effectiveness and self-control.