“Blood Pressure Readings Are Commonly Wrong”
Blood pressure determination is one of the most important measurements in all of clinical medicine and is still one of the most inaccurately performed. Hypertension (abnormally high blood pressure) is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease, stroke, and renal failure, and affects approximately one-third of the American population. Increasingly, it is recognized that clinic office blood pressure measurements correlate poorly with blood pressure measured in other settings, and that they can be made more accurate by self-measured readings taken with validated devices at home. Home readings can help predict cardiovascular events and are particularly useful for monitoring the effects of treatment for hypertension.
