Accutension uses the same measurement method as doctor’s and is ACCURATE. The accuracy is benificial for blood pressure management. Here are some examples. Blood pressure monitor at home is very important for whitecoat hypertension diagnosis because some people’s blood pressure could increase at doctor’s office because of anxiety.
Some consumers notice their blood pressure monitors are not accurate and ask the manufacturers for help. Here are the manufacturer’s step by stepsuggestions. However after all these are checked, the readings can still be consistently lower or higher than the correct value. The manufacturer would say that the blood pressure always fluctuates so you can measure 3 times and make the average. It is true that blood pressure fluctuates, but the monitor could also fluctuate with the true pressure.
15% home blood pressure monitors give wrong readings. Wrong readings here mean measurement error is bigger than 10mmHg. Question here is how significant is this 10mmHg error? What is the impact? Before we analyze the question, we need to clarify that the measurement error is not for a single measurement. As we know, blood pressures always fluctuate, which could mask the error of measurement. Here the error we are talking about is the offset of average value, either average of several times or over a period such as several days.
There are two kinds of comparison to show how inaccurate is the automated blood pressure monitor. One is to compare with the traditional sphygmomanoter that is the gold standard for indirect BP measurement. The difference is what people can feel when they compare their own machine reading and doctor’s reading. Another is to compare the reading from two automated BPMs. If these two machines give two different readings, there is at least one inaccruate machine.
Several years ago when I started to study blood pressure measurement theory, I found an interesting thing – every BPM manufacturer has its own method to guestimate the blood pressure, so called algorithm. Is there any measurement tool in the world like this? For example, does a ruler have an algorithm to measure the length? I dig further to understand this question. Blood pressure measurement with a cuff is indirect measurement.
We did extensive research on blood pressure measurement and reviewed more than 100 research papers. We picked up some representive papers to share with you. Blood Pressure Randomized Methodology Study Comparing Automatic Oscillometric and Mercury phygmomanometer Devices: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2009–2010, Yechiam Ostchega, Guangyu Zhang, Paul Sorlie, Jeffery P. Hughes, Debra ....
Most of the automated blood pressure monitors sold have passed at least one of them. However, even the automated BPM from the top brand is not accurate for everyone – majority of critical reviews for blood pressure monitors in Amazon website are complaints on inaccuracy and seldom of the reviewers know the exact reason. Those reviewers just thought they got defective device but have not suspected whether the intrinsic algorithm is accurate for everyone.
Technology is very advanced today. Most of the instruments are digital. However, there is an exception. Manual blood pressure cuff, or sphygmomanometer, is still widely used in doctor’s office. Why is that? The least possible reason is that doctors can’t afford an automated one. The manual blood pressure cuff is used because it can provide the accuracy for everybody. It is the baseline (gold standard) for blood pressure measurement.