Main Article Content

Invasive v. non-invasive blood pressure measurements the influence of the pressurecontour


W.B. Murray
A.M. Gorvan

Abstract

A reasonable correlation exists between invasive and noninvasive methods of measuring systemic blood pressure. However, there are frequent individual differences between these methods and these variations have often caused the validity of the non-invasive measurement to be questioned. The hypothesis that certain invasive systolic blood pressures may represent a pressure impulse rather than a flow-generating pressure was used to classify the invasive pulse pressure contour into various types, and the invasive pressure measurement was then correlated with the non-invasive. There was a significantly greater difference between these two methods of measuring systolic blood pressure in patients exhibiting prominent inotropic pressure pulse phenomena compared with patients without such phenomena. Since noninvasive monitors measure blood pressure by volume displacement or flow detection and invasive ones measure pressure impulses rather than flow, it was concluded that the pressure measured by the non-invasive monitor more accurately reflects the propulsive pressure-causing flow when inotropic pressure pulse phenomena are present.


Journal Identifiers


eISSN: 2078-5135
print ISSN: 0256-9574