Paper
Wednesday, 19 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Adult Health
Indirect Sphygmomanometry: Importance of Cuff Availability for Correct Measurement
Eugenia Velludo Veiga, RN, PhD, Departamento de Enfermagem Geral e Especializado, University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil, Edna Aparecida Moura Arcuri, RN, PhD, Departamento de Enfermagem Médico-Cirúrgica, Escola de Enfermagem, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, and Lyne Cloutier, RN, MSc, Département des sciences infirmières, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, QC, Canada.
Learning Objective #1: Identify the importance of measuring arm circumference for correct blood pressure measurement.
Learning Objective #2: Identify the importance of having appropriate cuffs available in blood pressure measurement practice.
Hypertension is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. It’s prevention, detection and treatment is based on accurate blood pressure measurement (BPM). Many factors can affect the reliability of BPM and an important one is the size of the cuff used for the procedure.  This study aimed to determine the availability of cuffs of different widths and confront it with the reality of arm circumferences of 81 patients admitted at a medical-clinical hospitalization unit of a university hospital in São Paulo State, Brazil. For this purpose, we interviewed professionals, directly observed routine blood pressure measurement procedures and measured these patients’ arm circumference. The arm circumferences of patients in this study ranged from 15.5 cm to 40.5cm. With a view to correct blood pressure measurement procedures, Brazilian guidelines recommend that cuffs cover 40% of arm circumference. According to these recommendations, at least 10 different cuff dimensions, ranging from 6 to 16 cm, should be available for patients in this study. However, at the unit where the research was carried out, only one cuff dimension was available (12 cm width), suitable for only 17.3% of the study participants. Using the wrong cuff can have tremendous impact on the health of individuals causing hypertensive patients not to be treated when they would need it or people who are normotensive to be diagnosed and treated for hypertension.

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