The following is a summary of “Agreement of Oscillometric and Auscultatory blood pressure measurement methods: An ambulance noise simulation study,” published in the May 2023 issue of Emergency Medicine by Tatliparmak, et al.

For a study, researchers sought to compare the agreement between oscillometric and auscultatory blood pressure (BP) measurement methods in different noise levels, specifically in ambient and noisy environments.

The method-comparison study involved 50 healthy volunteers recruited from a tertiary emergency department. The participants were divided into two groups, and BP measurements were performed using both auscultatory and oscillometric methods by two emergency medical technicians (EMTs). The measurements were conducted in both ambient and noisy environments. The primary aim was to assess the agreement between auscultatory mercury sphygmomanometers and automated oscillometric BP measurements under different noise conditions.

The agreement between auscultatory and oscillometric BP measurements in an ambient environment (with a median noise level of 46.75 dB) showed that both systolic and diastolic BP values fell within the predetermined level of agreement (LoA) established before the study (systolic BP: -13.96 to 8.48 mmHg; diastolic BP: -7.44 to 8.08 mmHg). However, in a noisy environment (with a median noise level of 92.35 dB), both systolic and diastolic BP values were outside the range of LoA (systolic BP: -37.77 to 9.94 mmHg; diastolic BP: -21.73 to 16.37 mmHg). Furthermore, the concordance correlation coefficients were higher in ambient environments compared to noisy environments (0.943 [0.906-0.966] vs. 0.574 [0.419-0.697] for systolic BP; 0.957 [0.93-0.974] vs. 0.544 [0.326-0.707] for diastolic BP).

The study’s findings indicated that noise significantly impacted the agreement between oscillometric and auscultatory BP measurement methods. The results suggested that accurate BP measurement may be compromised in noisy environments, highlighting the importance of considering noise levels during BP assessments.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0735675723000906