Opinion: Home blood pressure machines are often wrong. The FDA must speak up
These popular machines may be wildly inaccurate for people with wider or longer arms.
Hypertension is considered to be the No. 1 risk factor for death globally. So it’s no wonder convenient, relatively low-cost blood pressure machines with single-size, standard cuffs can be found in both clinics and homes across the U.S. The “Get It, Slip It, Cuff It, Check It” campaign makes it sound incredibly simple.
However, these popular machines and simple-sounding advice may lead to wildly inaccurate results for the sizable portion of the U.S. population with wider or longer arms. Investigators at Johns Hopkins recently conducted a randomized controlled trial published in JAMA Internal Medicine and discovered an automated BP monitor overestimated systolic blood pressure (the top number) by between 5 to 20 mm Hg in patients for whom standard cuff size was too small and underestimated it by 4 mm Hg when too large. Almost 40% in the trial were misclassified as hypertensive using the standard cuff based on a common threshold for hypertension (130/80 mm Hg).
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