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

Caltech Develops First Noninvasive Method to Continually Measure Blood Pressure

caltech.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 88 posts

Re: Caltech Develops First Noninvasive Method to Continually Measure Blood Pressure

#61

Post by jerrysievert »

thelittleone wrote: post #44
hereme888 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a resident physician and I deny having my BP taken in outpatient clinics. The techniques used are ridiculously inappropriate: "Ok, Mr. So-and-so, come with me." calls the nurse, as the pt who is irritated for having to wait 30 minutes quickly gets up to walk along unknown hallways, while rushing to finish a phone conversation, stressed and not knowing where to turn next..."Ok, now we're going to weigh you on this…

People try to cheat BP tests? Because they dont want tp taks BP meds? Daaaang I'm trying to get my head around that. I guess I'm missing something because that sounds like an incredibly tangled way to be.

as someone allergic to the bulk of blood pressure medications (currently taking some very old ones that don't affect me as much as the new ones that "don't have side effects"), hell yeah I'd cheat a blood pressure test if I could.

the difference between being a little dizzy and not being able to walk more than 10 feet without having to stop and throw up is huge.

Re: Caltech Develops First Noninvasive Method to Continually Measure Blood Pressure

#62

Post by WWLink »

ghaff wrote: post #59
WWLink wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really really depends on the office and their practices. I visited (and later brought my mom) to a cardiologist who is a terrible doctor, but his office does instruct you to log your blood pressure and then they review the logs. So at least they do that right. What they do wrong: Queuing up 10 patients at a time, seeing like 60 a day, and then jumping from room to room like a kid with a bad case of ADHD. Dude told…

My primary care recommended taking my BP at home periodically and even wanted to calibrate my home system against the office system. I do tend to test higher in the doctor's office but I still periodically take it at home.

The good doctor offices do recommend all that. :)

To be fair, I'm guessing a lot of people really suck at it lol.

Re: Caltech Develops First Noninvasive Method to Continually Measure Blood Pressure

#63

Post by grogenaut »

dgacmu wrote: post #26
coldcode wrote: post #4

As a person who had a hypertensive crisis late last year, nothing boils my blood (yes, a pun, I am fine now) more than how people measure blood pressure incorrectly in doctors offices and even hospitals. There are many different things than can increase a BP measurement above the "baseline" including talking, moving around, not having rested but also just waking up, not being in a supported position, only a single va…

It's frustrating. I usually bike to the doctor's office, and every time I warn them that they're going to get a systolic 10 higher than if they'll wait until the end of the appointment. They don't wait. The tech-taken entry gets put in the EMR. The doctor takes my BP again at the end, says "oh, great" and that reading gets ignored. :p As a sibling comment noted, I ended up deciding to just watch my BP at home every n…

I found that taking it at home helped a lot with white coat syndrome, I was more relaxed and more able to tell when I'd settled. I also just set a timer when walking and told the nurse "no not yet" when they tried to take my BP. They listened except the one nurse who insisted I was wrong and that I was 5'11" not 6'2" which was entered in by the urgent care the day before because people get shorter as they get older. You know, a day later, at 40, after being 6'2" since I was 18. no possible way she could be wrong, everyone else was. Also tried to mark me as an active smoker because I'd been in a resturant with smoking before, in the 90s and she had magically never been around smoke in her 50 years. The doctor corrected the smoker note but the height hung around in some SOT field even though the next 15 height measurements were 6'2" until I had an extra 10 minutes with a PA who went over all my records with me and corrected things.

I had trouble with 2 of the BPs drugs, one gave me head spins in the afternoon seated in my car sometimes, another gave me the dry cough (could feel a prickle in my thorat). My bp is actually high esp when I've had caffiene (what coder doesnt), move around, etc, but it's usually low pre-hyper tension. I also had it taken about 300 times in the last 6 months getting certified as an EMT. There's a LOT of variation in how the tools take the BP and just how close you're listening. I compared a manual cuff with one of the fancy automated ones and it's not that hard to hear your dystolic down 10 below what the automated reads. Same with systolic, you can hear it higher if you really listen before it starts sounding like a watch with another 10 spread, and you leave that cuff at 200 for 10 seconds and everyone's going to read higher and tense up more. I can feel my blood pressure surge any time an automated machine decides "nope I need to go higher on systolic" and it squeezes and I know I'm going to read high and have yet another conversation with the nurse and doctor. Just take it to 200 and come down stupid machine.

Re: Caltech Develops First Noninvasive Method to Continually Measure Blood Pressure

#64

Post by dillydogg »

HPsquared wrote: post #31
coldcode wrote: post #4

As a person who had a hypertensive crisis late last year, nothing boils my blood (yes, a pun, I am fine now) more than how people measure blood pressure incorrectly in doctors offices and even hospitals. There are many different things than can increase a BP measurement above the "baseline" including talking, moving around, not having rested but also just waking up, not being in a supported position, only a single va…

I find doctors and nurses rush things too much in general. I guess they're paid flat-rate, like mechanics?

If you had to see as many patients as your doctors do, you would be rushing around too.

Re: Caltech Develops First Noninvasive Method to Continually Measure Blood Pressure

#65

Post by dillydogg »

hereme888 wrote: post #38
coldcode wrote: post #4

As a person who had a hypertensive crisis late last year, nothing boils my blood (yes, a pun, I am fine now) more than how people measure blood pressure incorrectly in doctors offices and even hospitals. There are many different things than can increase a BP measurement above the "baseline" including talking, moving around, not having rested but also just waking up, not being in a supported position, only a single va…

I'm a resident physician and I deny having my BP taken in outpatient clinics. The techniques used are ridiculously inappropriate: "Ok, Mr. So-and-so, come with me." calls the nurse, as the pt who is irritated for having to wait 30 minutes quickly gets up to walk along unknown hallways, while rushing to finish a phone conversation, stressed and not knowing where to turn next..."Ok, now we're going to weigh you on this…

One of my attendings has a running joke where he takes fresh interns in July and tells them "I will take you to if you can take this patient's blood pressure correctly." He's been doing this for 30 years and no one has been treated to dinner yet. He's looking for the rest time, arm at heart level, everything.

Re: Caltech Develops First Noninvasive Method to Continually Measure Blood Pressure

#66

Post by dredmorbius »

Herodotus38 wrote: post #17

Aside from the home use, If this could be proven to be just as accurate as arterial lines this would be a huge benefit to patients in the ICU or undergoing major surgery where continuous blood pressure is needed. I hate putting in A-lines.

Yes, the concept is sold as a huge benefit in patient quality-of-life.

A-lines mean you can't just get up and move, or even roll over in bed. Non-invasive measures can simply be unclipped, or made fully mobile in the first place.

The problem is having a non-invasive method which works, which has been the sticking point until now.

Re: Caltech Develops First Noninvasive Method to Continually Measure Blood Pressure

#67

Post by lostlogin »

dillydogg wrote: post #65
hereme888 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a resident physician and I deny having my BP taken in outpatient clinics. The techniques used are ridiculously inappropriate: "Ok, Mr. So-and-so, come with me." calls the nurse, as the pt who is irritated for having to wait 30 minutes quickly gets up to walk along unknown hallways, while rushing to finish a phone conversation, stressed and not knowing where to turn next..."Ok, now we're going to weigh you on this…

One of my attendings has a running joke where he takes fresh interns in July and tells them "I will take you to if you can take this patient's blood pressure correctly." He's been doing this for 30 years and no one has been treated to dinner yet. He's looking for the rest time, arm at heart level, everything.

Correctly performed, it wont match every other BP test the patient has ever had done.

Re: Caltech Develops First Noninvasive Method to Continually Measure Blood Pressure

#68

Post by mkoryak »

teamspirit wrote: post #27
coldcode wrote: post #4

As a person who had a hypertensive crisis late last year, nothing boils my blood (yes, a pun, I am fine now) more than how people measure blood pressure incorrectly in doctors offices and even hospitals. There are many different things than can increase a BP measurement above the "baseline" including talking, moving around, not having rested but also just waking up, not being in a supported position, only a single va…

I had hypertension for about 15 years and after quitting drinking and smoking no longer do. I still suffer from white cost hypertension regularly and frequently have to tell nurses to just press the button again - second time drops back to normal range with a drop of about 20/10.

I stopped drinking and mine went up :p

Being sober is pretty stressful

Re: Caltech Develops First Noninvasive Method to Continually Measure Blood Pressure

#69

Post by lostlogin »

temporallobe wrote: post #48
hn72774 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had it too. When I was under stress, sometimes I could hear my pulse in my ears like a whooshing sound. I stopped drinking and my BP is now completely normal, and RHR is low 40's. Sleep is much better too.

Are you serious? Your RHR is in the low 40s? Mine is typically 58-65 and I was told I have bradycardia!

We have a heart rate monitor at work that we use on 1-2 patients for day. It alarms at rate below 50BPM. At least once a week it's alarming at us.

Re: Caltech Develops First Noninvasive Method to Continually Measure Blood Pressure

#70

Post by lostlogin »

robomartin wrote: post #20

I've been thinking a lot about continuos health parameter monitoring lately. For the last 100 days or so I have been running a personal health experiment and collecting multiple data points during the process. I guess some use the term "bio-hacking", not sure if it applies. The experiment has included multiple fasting periods, with a maximum of 7 days as well as changing one variable at a time in categories such as d…

> how many people might be misdiagnosed and put on medication every year because of bad data

Another variable that causes this is the patient. They don't like the medication or don't take it properly but tell their prescriber that they are taking the medication correctly (age, culture, dementia etc). The prescriber then adjusts the dose.

Post reply on HN