ABSTRACT
Current blood pressure monitoring in clinical practice faces a number of daunting challenges that have not yet been adequately addressed. e elimination of the mercury manometer to measure pressure has brought these challenges into sharp focus with the need to determine the best replacement pressure measurement system. Oscillometricbased systems appear to present the best opportunity for accurate measurement of SP, DP, and mean arterial pressure (MAP). However, the method presents both challenges (e.g., the discrepancies among manual sphygmomanometer measurements, oscillometrybased measurements, and invasive measures of blood pressure) and opportunities (e.g., the possibility of reducing or eliminating the confounding eects of the presence of observers during a measurement). e increased interest in home blood pressure monitoring as a more representative measurement of an individual’s blood pressure and health risk is based, in part, on eliminating observer bias from the measurement. In addition, a new appreciation of the clinical importance of other features of the blood pressure waveform is expanding the measurement of blood pressure beyond the current parameters of SP, DP, and MAP.
