Comparison of Home Blood Pressure Measurement Devices on Artificial Signals

Cardiovascular diseases are well known as one of the leading causes of death in developed countries. The hypertension is a significant danger and should be monitor carefully. In recent decades, auscultatory and oscillometric methods become as widely used for blood pressure measurement. In clinical practice, blood pressure measuring devices are evaluated according to validating protocols. Despite these protocols, a market with the automatic devices for home self-measurement of the blood pressure is flooded by a lot of cheap devices with doubtful accuracy. The aim of this study is to compare selected devices for the self-measurement in the home conditions. The devices were evaluated using the blood pressure simulators. For each device and each type of blood pressure signal, the absolute and the relative errors of the diastolic and the systolic pressures were evaluated. The obtained results show that the measurement error of these devices could be frequently higher than 5 mmHg and it is necessary to concern with the accuracy of the devices.