"Brian Reay" wrote in message
news

As an aside, I happened to meet someone involved in the design of a new
type of BP meter. He told me the 'cuff type' was generally accepted to be
potentially wildly inaccurate - there are too many things in the basic set
up which are not controlled- eg initial cuff fit, the point where the user
detects the 'change' (I can't recall the correct term he used), ......
While I accept he had reasons to criticise the 'old' approach (he was
working on the replacement), he knew I wasn't a customer and his points
did make engineering sense. He didn't share details of the replacement,
other than it worked by sensing flow as far as I could tell.

I can confirm that. I was discovered to have high blood pressure while in
hospital for something else. I always wonder if a given cuff will give
accurate results for both fat and skinny arms. Lidl had a recent offer of
a wrist-cuff meter for only £10 which I bought, but I found that the
readings
varied erratically from one to the next. When plotted on a graph my
average systolic is 140 which is "good" (compared with the doctors'
arm-cuff readings of over 180) but the peaks and troughs were about plus and
minus 40 on that, so I gave up using it.

When I was in hospital having arm-cuff readings every 6 hours, they also
varied wildly from sample to sample.
--
Dave W