Do you have a smartphone? Have you downloaded any apps that help you track or measure your own vital signs information—like blood pressure, heart rate, or glucose level? If you’re a health care professional, maybe you’ve downloaded apps that help you measure and stay informed about your patients’ vitals.  Either way, mobile healthcare-related apps are creating significant buzz within the mobile computing industry. Figures vary for the size of the home health and telehealth markets, but nobody questions that the number is in the billions of dollars, and such sweet numbers inevitably attract lots of bees.

Have you ever caught yourself yelling at the television when your favorite team drops a touchdown pass in the end zone or makes a fielding error late in the game?  We’re all guilty of it.  However, I feel obligated to share some bad news.  First, the coaches and players cannot hear you from the confines of your living room, and second, research shows that there is a direct link between spectator sports and an increased risk of cardiovascular (CV) events.  Dr. Franklin Zimmerman, from Phelps Memorial Hospital Center, recently published an article in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension investigating the blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) response of baseball and football fans both before and during games.

This Valentine's Day, when you are out making a mad dash to your local pharmacy for the perfect card, you may consider checking your blood pressure at the pharmacy's kiosk. We'd like to whisper sweet nothings in your ear about 3 things to consider while having your BP measurement taken at a kiosk.

That’s just the question Dr. Mark C. van der Wel and colleagues sought the answer to in an article published in the Annals of Family Medicine. As we at SunTech have mentioned in previous posts, two of the most prevalent problems with traditional in-office blood pressure assessment is improper observer technique and the white-coat effect.  As a way to overcome this, the authors developed a method of taking a series of in-office automated oscillometric blood pressure readings for 30 minutes by utilizing an ambulatory blood pressure monitor (ABPM) and compared those results with mean daytime ABPM results.

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.

As a manufacturer of blood pressure (BP) cuffs, we are often asked: “What is the difference between an Adult BP cuff (or “standard” cuff) and an Adult Long BP cuff?”

Simply put, a “long” cuff has the same range indicators and bladder size as a “standard” cuff, but the actual length is longer than that of a “standard” cuff.  Therefore, a “long” cuff is able to fit on a larger patient population than a “standard”  cuff.

You are probably asking yourself, “If the range and the bladder size is the same on both a “standard cuff” and a “long cuff”, do they both give accurate readings?”

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.