Blood p Monitor Questions, And Averaging Of Rdg's Question ?

Robert11 · medicine forum beginner Joined: 26 May 2005 Posts: 29

Hi,

For several years I have been taking my blood pressure with an automatic
inflating
monitor that I placed the cuff on my upper arm. Pretty much the typical
home based unit.

During that time, I experimented with taking a few readings one after the
other.
They always varied substantially from each other.
I posted a question re this on this forum, and the consensus was that this
wasn't a good idea, as the arteries hadn't relaxed, etc., and the subsequent
readings "probably" weren't very meaningful.

Just bought a new monitor, and has a three reading averaging function where
it immediately re-inflates the cuff for another reading. Does this 3 times.

The manual says that this is the most meaningful way to determine blood
pressure.

Just tried it out, and surprisingly the 3 reading were fairly close to each
other.

So, what do you experts believe is the best approach: just take a single
reading, or do the averaging technique ? Why ?

Also, this new monitor seems to indicate sfairly higher reading (tried for a
week) than my older unit typically gave.

Any way of calibrating these things ? How accurate are they typically ?
New unit is a CVS branded one, apparently from Microlife, labeled as a
Product # 271244

Thanks,
Bob

nospam7@heartmdphd.com · medicine forum Guru Joined: 27 Dec 2005 Posts: 470

Robert11 wrote:

Google