Medical Moment: A new way doctors are monitoring a patient’s blood pressure

(WNDU) - Almost half of all men and women in the United States have high blood pressure, yet many don’t even know it.

The best way to find out is to have it checked... But maybe the old-fashioned way of putting your arm into a blood pressure cuff at the doctor’s office is not the most accurate reading.

Now, there’s a new way doctors are getting a better idea of what your blood pressure really is.

“Hypertension is a huge public health problem in the United States and worldwide,” explained Dr. Maria Delgado, a hypertension specialist.

This is typically how you find out you have high blood pressure, but is it the best way? University of Miami Hypertension Specialist Maria Delgado says that patients can be stressed when visiting a doctor, it’s called White Coat Syndrome, and she often hears:

“‘At home, my blood pressure is 120 over 70. It’s just when I come here, it goes very high.’”

That’s why she believes this patch is the answer. In the Biobeat skin patch, light bounces from a sensor to the heart, then back to the patch, measuring heart rate, blood oxygen, and your blood pressure without you even knowing it.

“It goes through 24-hour measurements, and you don’t have any sensation that the blood pressure is being measured,” she continued.

It could be particularly good for measuring blood pressure at night. A study out of Oxford found 15% of people aged 40 to 75 may have undiagnosed high blood pressure that only occurs at night.

“You’re not going to be measuring your blood pressure at 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m. 3:00 a.m., so, this patch will help us understand what is happening to you while you’re sleep,” she finished.

The Biobeat skin patch is already available for patients to use and now researchers at the University of California San Diego ar working on an even smaller patch that uses soundwaves to track blood pressure.

Copyright 2024 WNDU. All rights reserved.