Hypertension is a common disease in our lives, especially among middle-aged and elderly people. However, due to the physical limitations of middle-aged and elderly people, they cannot go to the hospital for regular blood pressure checks. In this case, having a blood pressure monitor at home is particularly important. Although measuring blood pressure is simple, if not done properly, the measured values may be inaccurate and fail to reflect the patient's actual blood pressure. Let's take a look at the common causes of blood pressure measurement errors.
1. Factors of the Measurer
The accuracy of blood pressure measurements can be affected by factors such as improper operation or errors in vision and hearing of the measurer.
1. Lack of patience in measuring blood pressure. According to the advice of experts from the World Health Organization, patients should rest for a few minutes before measuring blood pressure. Moreover, blood pressure should be measured again after a few minutes, and this process should be repeated three times in order to determine the clinically relevant blood pressure values. However, nowadays, few people have the patience to measure blood pressure for patients. Instead, it is often a "one-time measurement", making it difficult to eliminate many interfering factors that can lead to false results or errors.
2. Being too far away from the auscultation point. Many measurers, after fastening the cuff, do not carefully touch the point of strongest arterial pulsation before placing the stethoscope head. Instead, they estimate a suitable auscultation position. Because of the deviation from the optimal auscultation point, the blood pressure sounds heard and the judgments made based on them are inevitably prone to errors.
2. Factors of the Testee
Factors of the testee include mental tension, stress response, bladder distention, cold stimulation, and activities such as eating, smoking, drinking alcohol, drinking tea, consuming coffee or stimulating beverages, and physical exertion, all of which can increase blood pressure. In addition, taking medications that affect blood pressure, such as antihypertensive drugs and sedatives, before measuring blood pressure can also affect the blood pressure level.
3. Environmental Factors
A noisy measurement environment can also cause errors in the measurement results, affecting the stability of the measurer's hearing and vision and causing the testee to become restless and experience increased blood pressure due to environmental influences.
It has been proven that any aspect will affect the measurement results when measuring blood pressure. Therefore, it is best to measure blood pressure in a quiet environment, with both the testee and the measurer being relatively calm, to prevent measurement errors.
