Blood pressure measurement over a sleeved versus a bare arm

Abstract EN

Objective: Technical issues and techniques are very important while measuring the blood pressure.

It has been recommended that blood pressure should be measured on bare arm.

In our society especially in females this procedure becomes difficult to practice due to social and cultural issues.

This study was carried out to find out that measuring the blood pressure with the cuff placed over the sleeved or without (bare arm) makes any difference.

Methods: We recruited 233 patients between 18 and 85 years of age from Duban Primary Health Center in Duhok between January and March 2017.

They all had their blood pressure recorded using the same automatic oscillometric device, with the cuff placed over their bare arms for the first reading.

Each patient was then randomly assigned to either the bare-arm group, for which the second blood pressure reading was also taken on a bare arm, or the sleeved-arm group, for which the second reading was taken with the cuff placed over the patient's sleeve.

Results: Two hundred and thirty three patients were included in the study.

The male patients were 120 (51.5%), and 113 (48.5%) were females.

The mean age of patients range from 15-85 years with mean (SD) of 45.91 (15.47) years.

The mean difference between the two groups when comparing the first and second systolic pressure readings was 0.69 (-5.35-6.74), 3.94 (-1.53- 9.42); the mean difference between the two groups when comparing the first and second diastolic pressure readings was 0.68 (-2.73-3.90), 1.49 (-1.66-4.65), this between-group difference was neither clinically important nor statistically significant, (p=0.600).

Conclusions: The difference found in blood pressure with and without the sleeve was neither clinically important nor statistically significant.