A trial of three non-invasive blood pressure monitors compared with invasive blood pressure assessment in atrial fibrillation and sinus rhythm

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the accuracy of three non-invasive blood pressure (BP) devices in atrial fibrillation (AF) compared with invasive arterial BP. Methods: One hundred patients aged 45-90 years, 63% male (50 in AF and 50 age matched controls in sinus rhythm [SR]) were identified with arterial lines measuring beat-to-beat BP fluctuation. Non-invasive BP measurements utilising the manual sphygmomanometer (MS), PulseCor R6.5 (PC) and automated sphygmomanometer (AS) were taken simultaneously with invasive BP in a randomised sequence. This was repeated three times in each patient. Results: In SR differences in systolic BP (SBP) for MS, AS and PC were −0.34 mm Hg (95% CI −2.31 to 1.63; P =.733), −3.80 mm Hg (95% CI −5.73 to −1.87; P =.0001) and −3.90 mm Hg (95% CI −5.90 to −1.90; P =.0001) and for diastolic BP (DBP) were 6.02 mm Hg (95% CI 4.39-7.64; P