preview

Bilateral Blood Pressure Essay

Decent Essays
Open Document

The process of taking blood pressure bilaterally is a way to screen patients for subclavian artery stenosis. Hypertension is an important, preventable contributing risk to cardiovascular disease. 80 million adults in the US have been diagnosed with hypertension. This disease is commonly seen in adults aged 60 years and older. The rationale for taking bilateral blood pressure is that if a blood pressure is checked incorrectly or in an arm that has SCA stenosis but has not been diagnosed can lead to improper management of HTN, leading to cardiovascular risk factors presenting themselves.
Many patients with SCA stenosis in the upper extremities may be asymptomatic and the symptoms may manifest themselves in a way that the only symptom is a difference in the SBP between arms. The SCA stenosis may be asymptomatic due to the fact that the circulation around the shoulder is sufficient. The flow around the area of stenosis the subclavian artery is tolerated.
SCA stenosis is defined as an SBP difference between arms of 15 mm Hg. Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) was defined as ABI 0.9. The PAD Guidelines for 2006 recommended taking blood pressure bilaterally and noting asymmetry on physical examinations. PAD Guidelines also recommended that when taking vitals to routinely include bilateral BP readings, …show more content…

Advise patients to avoid wrist cuffs as they tend to give higher BP readings than arm BP cuffs due to the smaller radius of the arteries in the

Get Access