You need to buy a blood pressure monitor, but you don't know which one to choose. Here's a guide to the various types, to help you find the right one for your everyday situation: the pros and cons of each one, how accurate and easy to read they are, and whether they're safe.

When your doctor prescribes 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure or Holter monitoring, you'll spend a day wearing a recorder the size of a cigarette packet attached to a cuff and worn on your left or right arm. This system monitors your blood pressure day and night for 24 hours.

Hypertension is a phenomenon that affects between 6% and 8% of pregnant women, and is the leading cause of maternal and fetal mortality. Often, the main complication is the need to induce the baby very early to prevent later problems.

Hypertension means high blood pressure, and is the most common cardiovascular risk factor - in other words, the probability of heart attack or stroke. In Italy, according to the most recent statistics, only 35% of people have had this checked, so each year there are many preventable cardiovascular incidents.

Blood pressure is determined directly by the work done by the heart, which acts as a pump absorbing and releasing the blood. Changes in blood pressure depend on the relationship between the quantity of blood pumped by the heart and the resistance of the blood vessels.