All caregivers need to trust the accuracy of automated blood pressure (BP) devices they use to make clinical decisions. But when considering one specific BP device versus another, how does one establish that trust? Well, an automated BP device that’s used to guide patient treatment is legally considered a medical device, and therefore must adhere to the regulatory guidelines for the markets in which it is sold.

We’ve written quite a bit here on the SunTech blog about BP technique. And guess what? We’re going to talk about it again! Maybe it’s not the most fascinating topic in the world of non-invasive blood pressure, but I think there are few as important to the successful treatment of high blood pressure. I must not be the only one, because studies that look at blood pressure technique continue to be published at a pretty good clip.

One of the more recent ones is aptly titled, “Blood Pressure Monitoring Technique Impacts Hypertension Treatment”. Authored by Ray et al and published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, this study compared the way that BP’s are normally taken during triage check-in on a population of 40 patients at the New Mexico Hospital Adult Internal Medicine Clinic. A study investigator observed the technique used by the clinician, and then took the patient’s BP using the AHA recommendations for blood pressure measurement published in 2005.

That’s the question I pondered while reading an article published earlier this year in the American Journal of Hypertension. In the article “Blood Pressure Measurement Method and Inter-Arm Difference: A Meta-Analysis,"* the authors reviewed studies where BP was measured in both the left and right arm of subjects. The results showed that on average, Systolic pressures differ by 5.4 mmHg between arms while Diastolic pressures showed an average inter-arm difference of 3.6 mmHg.

Here on the SunTech blog, we normally aim to provide valuable clinical information and helpful tips related to all things blood pressure. But allow me to wax philosophical for a moment, because…well, you’ll see why.

Right. So, for many of us who work in health-care or a health-care related field, there is significant meaning to be found in doing a job that can positively affect people’s well-being. It’s great to wake up every day knowing that you will indirectly or directly help to cure illnesses, heal wounds, save lives, and treat burns due to water skis on fire…wait, huh?

It’s one of the occasional issues we hear about BP monitors and automated BP technology, ours included.  And while it’s one of the reasons that we blog about the 10 Steps to Accurate Manual Blood Pressure Measurement and the 10 Factors That Can Affect Blood Pressure Readings, sometimes it takes more guidance to diagnose if a monitor is mis-reading.  Comparing BP measurements manually taken by an observer to those from a monitor is a common way of examining the accuracy of a monitor.  Clinical standards¹ that determine a monitor's accuracy provide detailed methods for making these comparisons.  Unfortunately, there are so many things done to control the environment and patient in these standards tests that it is not realistically possible to replicate in clinical practice.  However, here are a few of the more important issues that Richard Prowse, our OEM sales manager for Europe, Middle East, and Africa, shares with his customers when they are investigating a monitor that might be reading high.

I don’t know about you, but I am bombarded daily with more information than I can possibly process or make use of. Yet each day dawns requiring that I sift through it all, applying only what is relevant or helpful to me and my family, and at times the whole process can be exhausting. The miracle of the information age is also its curse. ‘Connected’ devices are proliferating at an astonishing pace, inexorably finding their way into our living rooms, dens, kitchens, bedrooms, vehicles, and belt clips. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but how many Twitter messages can a sane person realistically absorb in a given day? And more importantly, which ones are really useful?

This same phenomenon is happening today in health care...

Quite a lot has been said in clinical circles about the best way to assess a person’s blood pressure. Manual? Oscillometric? During office visits? At home? Over 24-hours? Average? Trend? Peak? At times, the debate has gotten pretty hot. In a recent issue of the journal Hypertension, Drs. George Stergiou and Gianfranco Parati published an editorial that proposes a more practical approach.

One thing we like to do at the SunTech blog is share debates and comparisons of automated vs. manual auscultatory blood pressure measurements. The latest comes from an article published in the Journal of the American Society of Hypertension earlier this year. This evaluation compared one particular automated oscillometric device with the results from the auscultatory method of listening for Korotkoff sounds during cuff deflation. The authors’ aim was to help readers better understand the fundamental differences between these two methods and illustrate how that might assist clinicians in effectively controlling and managing hypertensive patients.

­­When it comes to treating critically-ill patients in hospitals, you’d think there’d be consensus on how to monitor their blood pressure. But a recent article appearing in the Journal of Critical Care Medicine casts some doubt on that assertion.