BP Diagnosis and Systematic Review
BP Diagnosis and Systematic Review
Project Leads: Dr Richard McManus, Dr Carl Heneghan, Prof Richard Hobbs, Prof Jonathan Mant
Collaborators: University of Birmingham Department of Primary Care
This systematic review is comparing the optimal and most cost effective ways of diagnosing hypertension by comparing different techniques for measuring BP in the GP surgery, at home, and using 24 hour blood pressure devices.
This work is being led by the University of Birmingham Department of Primary Care.
Cross Sectional Study of Accuray of BP Devices
Project Leads: Dr Carl Heneghan, Dr Richard McManus, Dr Christine A’Court, Dr Alison Ward, Dr Matthew Thompson, Prof Richard Hobbs, Prof Jonathan Mant
Collaborators: University of Birmingham, Department of Primary Care; Dr Christine A'Court and Sarah Sanders of Broadshires Health Centre, Oxford
An accurate device is fundamental to all blood pressure measurements in the diagnosis of hypertension. However, evaluation of existing technologies is lacking, and it is recognized that the accuracy of BP measuring devices should not be based solely on the manufacturer’s claims. The initial results of our pilot work suggest for measurements accuracies of 0-3 mmHg there was no difference between an aneroid and a mercury sphygmomanometer. However, digital devices were half as likely as mercury devices to read within 0-3 mmHg, 41% vs. 73%: RR 0.56 (0.44 to 0.77). About 1/5th of all machines performed in the range 3-10 mmHg of accuracy. Both aneroid (12% vs. 4%: RR 2.89, 1.01-8.26) and digital devices (13% VS. 4%: RR 3.01, 1.12-8.08) were more likely than mercury devices to read >10mmHg inaccurate.
HyBeT
Project Leads: Dr Carl Heneghan, Dr Alison Ward, Dr Christine A’Court, Dr Daniel Lasserson
The aim of this study is to test the most accurate, reliable and acceptable methods of measuring, recording and electronically interpreting BP in primary care and to ascertain the most appropriate means to integrate this into daily practice.
The objectives are:
- To accurately predict a patient’s blood pressure reading using wireless blood pressure tele-monitoring technology
- Compare tele-monitoring readings to ambulatory blood pressure readings at one month
- To determine a patients response to treatment with a greater degree of accuracy than is currently possible in practice
- Estimate compliance with BP readings
- To increase the number of patients accurately detected as hypertensive, and treated, in a shorter space of time than current practice.
The study will make use of Bluetooth enabled blood pressure device, with wireless link to mobile phone for data transmission. The blood pressure system (t+ Medical) comprises a patient kit containing mobile phone, t+ software and a Blood Pressure monitor. This kit enables a patient to take BP measurements which are then sent over the mobile phone network to a secure central server. The patient kit can be configured so that no patient interaction with the phone is required and the patient simply uses the BP meter in a normal fashion while the data transmission from monitor to phone to server occurs automatically. The server has a secure website allowing clinicians to access the data and view it, presented in a variety of tables and charts. This system can also identify people who are not compliant allowing an intervention to bring these people back into compliance. Data can also be exported for analysis by the clinician or researcher onto a separate ICT system.