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.