Evaluation of instruments for noninvasive blood pressure monitoring of the wrist.

Commercially-available electronic, digital, oscillometric instruments for monitoring wrist blood pressure (BP) are intended for use by the general public in home health care. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of these instruments for accuracy, reliability, and failure rate. Blood pressure and heart rate (HR) measurements from the new wrist instruments were compared with sequentially recorded BPs determined by auscultation of the branchial artery and HRs determined by palpation of the radial artery. Accuracy and reliability were determined using linear regression, correlation coefficients, and standard error of the estimates. The wrist BP instruments were very easy to use on a variety of individuals. No failure to record a BP or HR was observed. The wrist devices appeared less accurate than the standard, branchial-artery, ausculatory method. The wrist BP instruments tended to overestimate hypotensive and significantly under estimate hypertensive BPs. The wrist device's HR accuracy and reliability appeared to approximate that of the standard method.