DrugXpert Blog

There are devices used to measure blood pressure. But they all depend on a single principle. The gold standard is the manual Mercury column sphygmomanometer and stethoscope. A sphygmomanometer is a device that measures blood pressure. It consists of an inflatable rubber cuff which is wrapped around the arm. The inflation is achieve with a bulb that is regulated by a valve. The Mercury is in a calibrated column that indicates the cuff pressure. A stethoscope is used to listen to the sound. It consists of a diaphragm with 2 flat circular parts where the wider side contains a thin plastic and an earpiece connected with a tube to the diaphragm. Mercury sphygmomanometer Android sphygmomanometer and stethoscope Another sphygmomanometer is the aneroid. It is the same with the Mercury column sphygmomanometer in terms of working principle. The only difference is that the Mercury column is replaced with a metal bellows-watch like movement. This bellows-watch is connected to the compression cuff....

I know you want to know what those blood pressure measurements mean. When you visit the hospital for treatment, the nurses do take vital signs. One of them is the blood pressure reading. They either use a sphygmomanometer and stethoscope or a digital blood pressure measuring device. The reading always comes with two figures. An upper and lower number. Read Also : How to measure blood pressure using digital device As we age, the need to regularly check blood pressure increases. Understanding the figure can mean life and death. Those figures tell alot about a person's health. The goal is to keep it at normal range. High blood pressure can lead to heart attack, heart failure, stroke and kidney disease. In this blog post, we will see the definition of blood pressure, the meaning of those figures in blood pressure measurement and its significance. One funny thing is that the accepted normal range has remained the same over the years.  But the classification of hypertension (high blood p...