Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
In this Expert Recommendation, Lauder and colleagues compare the latest European Society of Cardiology and European Society of Hypertension guidelines on hypertension, highlight the key consensus recommendations and compare differing approaches to definitions, classification, diagnosis and treatment, with the aim to help health-care professionals in their decision-making to improve the management of hypertension.
The physiological phenomenon whereby heart rate varies in phase with breathing in vertebrates has been known as ‘respiratory sinus arrhythmia’. In this Expert Recommendation, the authors argue that this terminology is potentially misleading and propose replacing it with the term ‘respiratory heart rate variability’, which avoids pathological connotations.
