Abstract

Blood pressure disease (BP) is one of the major public health problems around the world. There are many digital BP devices used at home. Doubts are usually raised about these devices. This study aimed to compare home (wrist) and (arm) digital blood pressure monitors with a mercury sphygmomanometer. This study was conducted at the University of Tabuk, comparing a digital BP meter (arm) and (wrist) with a properly calibrated mercury BP. A total of 100 randomly selected students aged 18 to 39 years were enrolled. Two blood pressure measurements for each person were recorded by all devices, and the values were recorded taking into account the environment of a person. The data were entered into MS Excel and analysis was done by using Social Sciences version 23.0. The normality of data was performed by the Shapiro-Wilk test and it was normally distributed. The mean and standard deviation were calculated for quantitative variables, while frequencies and percentages were provided for qualitative variables. Paired sample t-test was used to compare the mean values of systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP). Digital arm devices had sensitivity and specificity of 62.5% and 63%, respectively, compared to digital wrist devices, which had sensitivity and specificity of 75% and 56%, respectively. The readings of the digital blood pressure monitors were comparable to the readings of the mercury blood pressure monitor. Both devices could be considered indispensable tools for detecting hypertension at home and thus useful for early diagnosis.

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