Blood pressure self-monitoring offers no clinical benefit to pregnant women with chronic or gestational hypertension, nor those at high risk of pre-eclampsia, new research shows.

Results from two large trials, which included 3300 participants, suggest that compared to usual care, telemonitoring of systolic blood pressure (BP) does not lead to improvements in clinic-based BP control.

In the first trial — dubbed BUMP 1 (Blood Pressure Monitoring in High Risk Pregnancy to Improve the Detection and Monitoring of Hypertension) — UK researchers used data from 2400 pregnant women at elevated risk of pre-eclampsia.

The cohort was recruited at 16-24 weeks’ gestation and were randomly assigned to BP self-monitoring (SM) plus usual antenatal care versus usual care alone.