Blood Pressure Today

Blood pressure is one of the most important cardiovascular parameters in nearly every care area, but its measurement is still afflicted with problems. The clinical standard using the noninvasive upper arm cuff only measures intermittent systolic and diastolic blood pressure, whereas the valuable beat-to-beat information is missing. The other standard using invasive intra-arterial catheters delivers continuous information, but it is costly, time-consuming and, above all, painful to the patient and often not indicated.

 

Blood Pressure Monitoring in Critical Care

Due to its invasiveness, intra-arterial blood pressure monitoring is restricted to the critical care setting. For perioperative monitoring, invasive measurement is indicated in less than 20% of the patients. The remaining 80% of the patients are monitored with intermittent upper arm sphygmomanometers. In the majority of these cases this is only done for reasons of noninvasiveness and far lower cost. However, studies have shown that the arm cuff is unable to track hypotensive blood pressure episodes up to 38% of all cases. In another 22% of all cases, dangerous blood pressure changes are reported with a delay.

This can lead to delayed treatment or to completely missing hypotensive episodes. Intraoperative hypotension during surgery significantly increases the 1-year post surgical mortality rate. Clinical studies show that up to 56% of perioperative cardiac arrests are preceded by pronounced hypotension. Beyond the perioperative setting, hypotensive episodes might also be overlooked in the emergency room, during procedural sedation (e.g. endoscopy, cardiology, …) and in intermediate care facilities.

 

Blood Pressure in other clinical areas

Outside critical care and anesthesia an insertion of an intra-arterial catheter solely for blood pressure measurement is not justified. Recent research activities show that beat-to-beat blood pressure contains valuable information for medical areas such as cardiology, internal medicine, neurology, sports medicine, and many more. Cardiovascular and autonomic parameters like hypo- and hypertensive episodes, cardiac performance indicators, sympathetic and parasympathetic drive, baroreceptor reflex sensitivity and many more help doctors and therefore patients in prevention, diagnosis and therapy control.

Our technologies, combined with evaluation algorithms, now enable state-of-the-art medicine in various fields of application.