Blood pressure cuffs get it wrong 30 percent of the time

Cuffs that doctors use to measure blood pressure get it wrong around 30 percent of the time—especially when it comes to assessing hypertension (high blood pressure).

The remedy could be simple.  Just raise your arm for a few seconds before the cuff is put on and the chances increase of an accurate reading, say researchers from Cambridge University.

The cuff—more properly known as the auscultatory method—is put on the upper arm before being inflated, which cuts off blood flow to the lower arm; the doctor then listens for tapping sounds in the arm through a stethoscope while the cuff is slowly deflated.

Blood pressure is given as two separate numbers: a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure. A blood pressure reading of 120/80 is considered ‘ideal’.

Although it’s a routine test, the cuff often gets it wrong and misses around 30 percent of cases of high blood pressure, overestimating diastolic pressure and underestimating the systolic reading.

While everyone has known the cuffs often produce inaccurate readings, nobody was quite sure what to do about it.

The Cambridge researchers created a model that replicated the way the cuff works, and they discovered that simply raising the arm before the cuff is attached improves blood flow and increases the chance of a more accurate reading.

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