Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Measuring blood pressure for less than a dollar using a phone

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 90 posts

Re: Measuring blood pressure for less than a dollar using a phone

#71

Post by zdragnar »

acumenical wrote: post #61
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people have “white coat” syndrome I mean, go to a different doctor if yours somehow doesn't know about it. Mine all have. They help account for it by sending folks home with a blood pressure machine hooked up, which you wear for 24 hours. It regularly measures blood pressure - every 15 mintues, IIRC, including at night. In the US, I had a doctor suggest I take it outside of the office regularly so that we co…

> for-profit health insurance companies all would rather not pay for it Do you really believe a for-profit company doesn't want profit?

They don't profit from doctors charging them, they profit by getting premiums and paying out less than they take in.

Re: Measuring blood pressure for less than a dollar using a phone

#72

Post by chr1 »

mhb wrote: post #3

Super clever. But one of the comments: This measures blood pressure in the fingers. There is no consistent way to translate that to a brachial artery blood pressure, which IS 'close enough' to the aortic valve. No calculations are needed, because the bloods pressure at the brachial artery will be only a few mm/Hg lower than it is at the aorta. But on the way to the fingers, the blood pressure lowers, and a multitude…

The article says it can differ from cuff device reading by as much as 8mmhg, but cuff device itself can have lerger error if it is not weared on the hand correctly.

So if the figure in the article is correct, this would be very useful for people living alone to quickly get approximate measurment.

Re: Measuring blood pressure for less than a dollar using a phone

#73

Post by sgtnoodle »

spqr0a1 wrote: post #51
notdang wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

previous comment meant to out the fingeron the wrist and count the pulse by yourself, analog way.

Surely the process of using fingers to measure discrete pulses is digital.

I am pretty sure you're making a clever pun, but I would suggest the word "natural".

Re: Measuring blood pressure for less than a dollar using a phone

#74

Post by midnightauro »

mwint wrote: post #70
paxys wrote: post #69

Great tech no doubt, but it's funny that they tout a $1 attachment to a $500+ smartphone as being more accessible to low income people than a $20 standalone blood pressure monitor.

Many low income people already prioritize having a phone over health(y/ier) food. And honestly, in today’s world that may not be as horrible a tradeoff as it first sounds.

Also you can finance a phone even with awful credit as long as the carrier you choose doesn’t have history with you. $45 a month for the top of the line iPhone is basically a fart in the wind at the grocery store.

Re: Measuring blood pressure for less than a dollar using a phone

#75

Post by sgtnoodle »

porknubbins wrote: post #33
francisofascii wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a new doctor recently and he agrees. He also told me to take by BP multiple times a day several days a week, for several weeks. To base high blood pressure on one reading at the doctors office every few months is won’t get you the statistical significance you need. And also to record if you drink coffee that day, if you exercised before a reading, slept well the night before, etc. BP can vary greatly from all t…

But if those daily factors are happening all the time at some point isn’t that blood pressure measurement the one that matters? If I can get to normal bp by extreme efforts but spend most of my time in mild hypertension I might need to treat it somehow.

Blood pressure varies throughout the day with activity and it's all normal. My understanding is it's only considered hypertension if your pressure is high even at rest. If you're chronically stressed out all the time, though, then yeah maybe you're at risk of a stroke?

Re: Measuring blood pressure for less than a dollar using a phone

#76

Post by midnightauro »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #24
wmidwestranger wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well doctor, your staff prefers to take my blood pressure while talking to me and putting a thermometer in my mouth which I'm certain violates the protocol and the target numbers were lowered by a significant amount a few years ago to boot and most people would resent pharma companies even in the best of times, so may I just accept my miniscule stroke risk in peace please and maybe focus on the underlying issues? I a…

Actively talking during blood pressure measurements can cause false positives. Listening and sampling of temperature in parallel shouldn't. Target systolic blood pressure in hypertensive adults is still 120-130 mmHg. The stroke risk is certainly not "minuscule", people die a lot less when they take the medicine. Underlying issues are likely to be exacerbated by hypertension since it causes continuous damage to major…

I left a specialists office because the staff had a nasty habit of walking me UPSTAIRS and then straight into a chair with the cuff going on.

I was pretty sick at that point and bedridden at times so going upstairs had my heart rate meeting Jesus for the first few minutes of activity.

They tried to take me off my medications that could be “raising your blood pressure before you have a stroke”.

I went to a sane office who asked me to continue daily home monitoring and accepts my current pcp’s measurements.

Somehow the drastic intervention in the prior paragraph has ever come up again.

Re: Measuring blood pressure for less than a dollar using a phone

#77

Post by sgtnoodle »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #20
francisofascii wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a new doctor recently and he agrees. He also told me to take by BP multiple times a day several days a week, for several weeks. To base high blood pressure on one reading at the doctors office every few months is won’t get you the statistical significance you need. And also to record if you drink coffee that day, if you exercised before a reading, slept well the night before, etc. BP can vary greatly from all t…

> To base high blood pressure on one reading at the doctors office every few months is won’t get you the statistical significance you need. Depends. If it's high enough and there's other risk factors, it's pretty safe to immediately diagnose it as hypertension.

A few years ago I randomly suffered from total heart block, and over a couple months my effective heart rate gradually slowed down from 80bpm to 20-30bpm. When I ended up in the hospital, they put in a pacemaker and my heart rate immediately shot up to 110bpm. I was monitored to-the-nines in the ICU for several more days, and my blood pressure was like 160/120. I had the worst "caffeine headache" of my life.

One of the nurses was really worried that I had hypertension and kept talking about it. He just needed to chill out, though, and just added unnecessary stress. I literally had a dozen cardiologists and a lecture hall of medical students studying me.

My elbow hurt for weeks after that, from the IV and that ICU blood pressure cuff squeezing down on it every 15 minutes for 5 days straight.

Re: Measuring blood pressure for less than a dollar using a phone

#79

Post by fibonachos »

JshWright wrote: post #60
IndySun wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...Was on a mostly plant-based diet (no meat at all)... i.e., A vegetarian diet?

Sounds like it was vegetarian, bordering on vegan.

This is correct. Or to paraphrase The Princess Bride, “Only mostly Vegan”.

Re: Measuring blood pressure for less than a dollar using a phone

#80

Post by spyder »

kekeblom wrote: post #42
JimtheCoder wrote: post #21

I'll get excited when someone comes up with a user friendly continuous blood pressure monitor. Until then...

There is https://aktiia.com/uk/

This looks like it' using the method that was mentioned in the article too, it needs regular calibration with a cuff (which they include with the product).
Post reply on HN