How biomedical technology becomes nowadays a main actor in prevention and control of hypertension

Abstract

Nowadays, arterial hypertension (HT) is a significant problem of public health, as a chronic disease and a risk factor for other serious cardiovascular diseases (CVD). This work reviews the part of biomedical technology is playing today with the advent of lower cost, portable, automatic and accurate measurement devices at the hand of diagnosed patients or healthy subjects at risk of developing HT, for monitoring or screening purposes. Experience with ambulatory blood pressure (BP) measurement proved that values at home are smaller than those measured in clinic and are smaller in women that in men. While a HT risk is present when blood pressure measured in clinic is > 140/90 mmHg, the same is true for values > 135/85 mmHg when measuring at home. As for technology, whereas the mercury manometer device remains the gold standard of non-invasive BP measuring, its future is questionable due to restraining usage of mercury in the European Union. The devices equipped with aneroid capsule continue to be popular for use at home; timely recalibrating such devices is of peculiar importance. In recent years, progress of biomedical technology has promoted electronic automatic devices as election solutions for ambulatory BP measurement. However, each type present in the market has advantages and disadvantages, including its validation records, so that the clinical engineer should be consulted before the subject or patient make a proper choice. © 2009 Springer.