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Blood Pressure Lab Report

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How BP is Measured
Blood pressure (BP) is measured using an instrument called a sphygmo- manometer. This has an inflatable cuff which goes around your upper arm, a small pump to push air into the cuff and a column of mercury (or a dial) to record the pressure within the cuff.
As the cuff is inflated with air, the person measuring your BP usually feels for a pulse (brachial artery) in the crook of your elbow. While the pressure within your artery stays higher than that in the cuff, blood can be felt pulsing through. Once the pressure in the cuff becomes greater than that in your artery, the vessel is squashed flat and blood stops flowing through it at that point. By inflating the cuff to an initial pressure that is higher than the expected systolic pressure, then lis- …show more content…

The pressure registering in the cuff at this point is taken as your systolic BP. The cuff is then slowly deflated further while listening over your artery. The tapping sounds become louder, then change to a dull whooshing noise before disappearing. The point at which blood can no longer be heard whooshing through the vessel is taken as your diastolic BP. The pulsing noise heard in the artery between these two pressures is a result of turbulence as the cuff impinges on the vessel and deforms its walls. We therefore know that the blood pressure in the artery is the same as that in the cuff at the point where the sounds disappear, as turbulence is no longer occurring. BP can also be measured with modern digital cuffs that fit around the wrist. BP is measured according to the length of a column of mercury it can support. It is therefore expressed in millimetres of mercury (mmHg). BP is written down as the higher pressure (systole) over the lower figure

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