[3] The patient's daytime ambulatory blood pressure is used as a reference as it takes into account ordinary levels of daily stress.

Masked hypertension (MH) is the contrasting phenomenon, whereby a patient's blood pressure is above the normal range during daily living but not in a clinic setting.

These methods often involve an interface with health care professionals and frequently results are tarnished by a list of factors including variability in the individual's blood pressure, technical inaccuracies, anxiety of the patient,[6] inadequate cuff size of the instrument (sphygmomanometer) used to measure blood pressure,[7] recent ingestion of pressor substances, and talking, amongst many other factors.

[8] People with white coat hypertension do not exhibit the signs indicative of trepidation and their increased blood pressure is often not accompanied by tachycardia.

Ambulatory monitoring has been found to be the more practical and reliable method in detecting patients with white coat hypertension and for the prediction of target organ damage.