Dive Brief:
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A study in the American Journal of Hypertension found that many home blood pressure monitoring devices that help patients manage hypertension are not accurate.
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The small study found that most blood pressure devices were not accurate within 55 mm HG. The study authors said “ensuring acceptable accuracy of the device-owner pairing should be prioritized.”
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The study involved 85 people over the age of 18, who owned an oscillometric home blood pressure device (wrist or upper-arm device) with blood pressure levels between 80-220/50-120 mm HG.
Dive Insight:
These results are concerning as doctors use home blood pressure monitoring devices to manage hypertension patients. The devices help doctors track patients, let patients know their numbers, and can limit unnecessary physician visits.
This a small study, so we shouldn’t get too ahead of ourselves. The industry will need to review the findings and make sure their devices are more accurate than what was shown in this report.
Some findings that might interest physicians – arm size and gender played a part in discrepancies with systolic blood pressure. Older age and larger arm circumstance were connected to differences in diastolic blood pressure, according to the study.