The Accuracy of Blood Pressure Measurement

The act of measuring a patient’s blood pressure with a stethoscope and a sphygmomanometer is among the most important because of the various clinical implications that may occur. Failure to detect elevated blood pressure levels may expose a patient to the risk of various complications such as stroke, heart failure, kidney failure, and premature atherosclerosis. Conversely, obtaining falsely elevated measures may lead to diagnostic investigations and use of costly and life-threatening drugs. The concern with the proper calibration and validation of blood pressure measurement devices is constant and fundamental for clinical practice. Turner et al., in a detailed computational study, demonstrated that the error resulting from the decalibrated sphygmomanometer accounts for 20% to 28% of cases of undetected systolic and diastolic hypertension and 15% and 31% of cases of falsely diagnosed systolic and diastolic hypertension, respectively.

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