Innovation in measuring obese patients’ blood pressure: measurement with conical wrapping technique

Abstract

Introduction Accurate measurement of blood pressure (BP) is difficult in obese patients due to their upper arm shape and width. Errors made during BP measurement cause misdiagnosis or lead to wrong treatment.

Method The data of this methodological study were collected from 40 patients who were 18 years old or above, with a BMI above 25 kg/m2, and who were followed up with radial catheter arterial pressure in adult intensive care and postoperative care units between March and December 2020.

Results In total 55% of the participants were male with a mean age of 63.9 years, mean height of 165.7 cm, mean weight of 85.2 kg and mean BMI of 31.0 ± 2.1 kg/m2. Intra-arterial BP (IABP) measurement values were found to be correlated with conical wrapping technique and cylindrical wrapping technique (P < 0.001). As a result, a statistically significance was found between conical SBP and intra-arterial SBP (r = 0.921; P < 0.05) and conical DBP and intra-arterial DBP (r = 0.902; P < 0.05)

Conclusion It was determined that the SBP and DBP results of the conical wrapping technique were closer to the results obtained by IABP measurements. For this reason, it is more appropriate to measure BP with conical wrapping technique in clinically obese patients.