Household Blood Pressure Monitor, Don’t Choose Mercury

The prevention and treatment of hypertension begins with “paying attention to one’s own blood pressure”. It is a basic work to carry out family self-monitoring of blood pressure. Among them, choosing a good sphygmomanometer is also crucial.

Mercury sphygmomanometer is a classical instrument, but it is not suitable for recommendation in family manometry. The reasons are as follows:

1. Mercury sphygmomanometer uses mercury. If it is improperly operated, it will lead to mercury leakage. Mercury will not only pollute the environment, but also cause harm to the human body. Even in hospitals at all levels, it will gradually be discontinued.

2. The use of mercury sphygmomanometer requires professional trained personnel to measure the hearing (i.e. Coriolis audiometry), but they can not measure their own blood pressure and many other factors, will produce errors in blood pressure measurement results.

Therefore, electronic sphygmomanometer gradually replaced mercury column blood pressure as the main blood pressure measurement tool. In home blood pressure measurement, the upper arm electronic sphygmomanometer is recommended to measure blood pressure more accurately and stably than wrist and finger cuff sphygmomanometers.

Wrist electronic sphygmomanometer is easy to carry, especially for obese people. It will not encounter the embarrassment of using cuff because the arm is too thick.

However, the pressure measurement results will also be affected by the following factors:

1. When the wrist position is lower than the heart, the result will be higher.

2. Structural factors of wrist, wrist radial artery is wrapped by bone and tendon, wrist band pressure sometimes does not necessarily completely press on the artery, in addition, wrist flexion and overextension will also affect the results of manometry;

3. The diameter of radial artery is smaller than that of brachial artery. It is more likely to cause blood pressure errors in patients with severe atherosclerosis and peripheral vascular disease caused by severe diabetes mellitus.

Although finger-sleeve electronic sphygmomanometer is easy to use, its measuring position is different from that of brachial artery, and it is influenced by temperature difference and limb position. It is also not recommended to use in home blood pressure measurement.

Originally from: People’s Network – Life Times

2020-06-24