To the Editor,
We thank all of the authors for their valuable comments, and we were delighted to see your interest to our study (1), entitled “Association of P-wave dispersion and left ventricular diastolic dysfunction in non-dipper and dipper hypertensive patients,” published in the April issue of The Anatolian Journal of Cardiology 2014; 14: 251-5.
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1)
You are right about the mentioned parameters, such as e’, a’, and E/e’; this may be a deficiency of our study. Nevertheless, we will take your advice into consideration for future research.
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2)
Deficient of normal fall of blood pressure at night is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease (2). Reverse-dipper or riser patients generate a small portion of hypertensive patients (3). Although this group is at risk for stroke (commonly intracranial hemorrhage), especially in elderly patients (4). However, despite the evidences, reverse-dipping is not mentioned in the valid guide- lines currently (5). The small number of patients was another deficiency in our study to obtain wide-angle data. Consequently, we did not examine and create a reverse-dipper group. Studies involving more patients with longer follow-ups may contribute valuable parts of further guidelines.
References
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