Originally Posted by
GTF425
I work at an agency that runs 130,000 911 calls a year and we do not use automated BP cuffs. I auscultate (conservatively) around 10,000 blood pressures annually.
I run this exact scenario: "My machine says my blood pressure is high/low".
So I'll take a manual BP that is different. Maybe not significantly, 10-20mmHg in your SBP is insignificant in the larger picture (in my environment, Pt presentation trumps numbers) but it's definitely different. I've had Pt's with wrist cuffs that are SIGNIFICANTLY different...one that stands out recently was a geriatric living alone who's wrist cuff told them their BP was something ridiculous like 78/46 and I auscultated something around 130/70 and they wanted to argue vehemently that I did not know what I was doing and that the machine is right.
Roger that.
I'm a sample of one Paramedic in the big, violent sea of Atlanta- but I do trust what I hear and feel over an automated BP and can say with confidence that non invasive blood pressure monitoring is less accurate than auscultation or an arterial blood pressure.
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