What Does a Perfect Blood Pressure Meter Look Like from a Clinician Point of View?

In our usual busy cardiology clinic, we always measure the blood pressure (BP) of our patients hundreds of times each week. At this moment, many physicians are still using a mercury sphygmomanometer in outpatient and inpatient clinics, and our hands lose gripping power by evening (Fig. 1). On the other hand, for a patient who comes to my office complaining of high BP for the first time, I always ask them to measure their BP at home or to wear an ambulatory BP monitoring device to obtain as exact and precise BP data as possible. However, such patients sometimes complain about the cumbersomeness or discomfort of frequent home BP measurements. Thus, I feel that the way of measuring BP (to pressurize a cuff manually or mechanically, to release it, and to read the value of BP) has not changed drastically for a long time even under this digital and computerized world. In this article, I give an overview of some problems faced in measuring BP, and propose an ideal BP measurement machine or mechanism for a clinician to measure BP as efficiently and comfortably as possible.