Week 7

This week, my progress is focus on the problems created by blood pressure devices. From my research, I have found several information discussing the matter of blood pressure measurement quality between two types of blood pressure devices. The devices are Mercury Sphygmomanometer and  Electronic Blood Pressure Monitor. Both of the devices explain their function and reliability on doing measurement to the patient whether done by qualified health workers and the non-health workers. this part is still in progress and will be updated soon.

Problem Statement

           

Population monitoring and screening of blood pressure is an important part of any population health strategy. Qualified health workers are expensive and often unavailable for screening. Non-health workers with electronic blood pressure monitors are increasingly used in community-based research. This approach is to compared blood pressure measurement taken by non-health workers using electronics devices against health worker using mercury sphygmomanometers. This matter were pointed to statistic of Global Health Action website issues on the “blood pressure measurement by non-health workers using electronic blood pressure monitor devices.

For information, there were two types of blood pressure device were used these day. This device is Mercury Sphygmomanometers and Electronic Blood Pressure Monitor. Furthermore, the problem is always at the sources of error in measurement of blood pressure are attributing to both the device and the operator. It is needed to validate the combination of the device and the operator. The target is everyone can do the blood pressure measurement independently.

Based on the statistics, mercury sphygmomanometer is the best used by qualified health worker instead of regular people. Considering to the Mercury Sphygmomanometers, the table below will explain more about the efficiency and accuracy of both types of blood pressure devices by doing several measurement. The result is respectively taken by health workers and non-health workers. (Diastolic and systolic blood pressures were recorded twice by each data collector, on left arm only. Between 30 seconds and 1 minute elapsed between repeated measurements to minimize venous congestion.)

From the table; the value is taken four times means T1-T4. The measurements are depending on the timing and the device or operator used. It was generally consistent with a classification of blood pressure in the desirable range. 

 

However, the similarities of result values are little compared to the differences found at the table measurement. With respect to the systolic maximum and minimum values, the mercury devices operated by health workers have lower values than the electronic devices operated by non-health workers, but all have similarities in means and medians. For the diastolic values, the electronic devices record lower mean and median values than the mercury devices (~5mmHg), and also recorded lower maximum values.                                          



reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_pressure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphygmomanometer
http://www.globalhealthaction.net/index.php/gha/article/view/14876/html 
http://www.davidgregory.org/blood_pressure_monitors.htm
http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/11539/1/Accuracy-of-a-Wrist-Blood-Pressure-Monitor.html