Electronic Blood Pressure Cuffs

[jhicks]

Is anyone using the electronic blood pressure cuffs for donor screening and, if yes, how did you validate the cuff/sphygmomanometer?

[heathervaught]

We only use the old-fashioned type. In this case, you are comparing apples to apples (they are granny smith and golden delicious, though!). I would suggest that the easiest validation would be to perform repeat BPs (as close as feasibly possible) on the same person; select X number of people who will be tested; expect that your electronic cuff will be within +/- Y systolic and +/- Z diastolic of your current device. If you perform a calibration/QC on the current device, then I would perform it on the new device as well.

[velliott]

Yes, we use electronic BP / temperature instruments. We use Critokon and Welch Allyn. There are calibation keys to check the temperatures and there is calibration check for the BP. The calibration checks is for linearlity and for the transducers. :clap:The calibration keys and calibrator are calibrated yearly by an outside service.

[velliott]

I also would like to mention that 2 people can be checking blood pressures on the same person, different arms at the same time and get different readings. We were a little skeptical at first....but remember everyone else monitors BP electronically...e.g. OR, ED etc.....no one in a hospital does manual BP anymore. We were also looking for efficiency and ways to move donors through faster. You can check a BP, temp and count their pulse in the minute that a hemotacrit is spinning (we use Hemestat).

[velliott]

I had an AH HA moment last night and realized you asked about validation not calibration. We did not validate ours......because you are comparing apples to oranges if you use manual versus electronic. You know whats also ironic? We are a donor service inside a hospital......we do more maintence for our BP cuffs than nursing and they are using their for diagnostic purposes. Our calibration makes sure the instruments are in tolerance. We also do the same thing with our manual cuffs, even though we do not use them routinely to check BP. We put them on the donor's arm instead of a tourniquet. Every 6 months we check the bladders, tubing, bulbs etc and make sure they perform as expected.

[jhicks]

You've been very helpful. Thanks for all your information.

[Deb]

Is anyone using the electronic blood pressure cuffs for donor screening and, if yes, how did you validate the cuff/sphygmomanometer?

We are also going to be validating some electronic BP/pulse equipment and I'm wondering what criteria you finally decided on using? ... and how close you required your readings to be within?

Thanks

Deb

dschue@altru.org