Blood pressure may read falsely high if the arm isn’t positioned properly

When the arm is on the lap or the side, a blood pressure reading can be erroneously high. But when the arm is supported and at heart height, a blood pressure reading is more more likely to be right.

In a clinical trial, researchers investigated the effect that different arm positions had on blood pressure readings, which consist of two numbers. The first, the systolic, represents the blood’s pressure against the artery walls when the guts beats. The 2nd, the diastolic, is the pressure between beats, when the guts rests.

For trial participants with their arm in their lap, systolic and diastolic readings skewed about Four millimeters of mercury higher, on average, in comparison with the readings of participants with the recommended arm position: at heart level and supported by a desk or table. For participants whose arm hung at their side, the systolic reading was close to 7 millimeters of mercury higher and the diastolic reading was Four millimeters of mercury higher, researchers from Johns Hopkins University report online October 7 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

An estimated A hundred and twenty million adults within the United States have hypertension — defined as a reading equal to or greater than A hundred thirty/eighty millimeters of mercury — or take blood pressure lowering drugs. Hypertension increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke (SN: 5/29/18).

To get the most accurate blood pressure reading, medical guidelines recommend people have their legs uncrossed and feet flat on the ground, their back supported, their arm positioned appropriately and a properly fitting blood pressure cuff. But how closely medical offices follow these guidelines with their patients varies, the learn about’s authors note.

So so you might mean inaccurate readings for some people, which could possibly bring about unwarranted diagnoses of hypertension. With data from a national survey on health and nutrition from 2017–2018, the Johns Hopkins researchers calculated that, at a cut off of A hundred thirty millimeters of mercury, fifty four million adults may perhaps be misclassified as having hypertension if the arm isn’t positioned properly.