Blood Pressure : How to choose the right blood pressure monitor

Buying the RIGHT home blood pressure monitor is no mean task. The decision should be taken with utmost care since it can ?affect’ your blood pressure readings for a long time to come.

As we have discusses in a previous post, there is a glut of home blood pressure monitors in the market today. And they come with so many features and in such a wide variation of price that the buyer often finds himself at sea while making the choice.

A Blood Pressure monitor

A Blood Pressure monitor

Let me share with you a few simple guidelines which will help you buy just the right home blood pressure monitor for your needs without burning a hole in your pocket.

As a matter of rule, home blood pressure monitors used on the upper arm give the most accurate and reliable results. Given a choice, one should always prefer them over a wrist or a finger monitor.
The most expensive home blood pressure monitors are not always the best. Smart manufacturers will try to befool you by adding features like inbuilt memory, pulse wave graphs, interactive graphs and sharing your results with your friends via email (weird, isn’t it??) etc and charge you may times the cost of a normal, simple apparatus. Though such features are DESIRABLE, they are NOT a must-have.
Talk to you about the features YOUR home blood pressure monitor MUST have to your doctor so that you can choose one with utmost care.
Whatever the type of home blood pressure monitor you are using, make sure to buy the right cuff size. Even if you stick to the good old manual device, buy the cuff size that fits you properly at the upper arm to be able to get an accurate reading. In case of digital apparatuses too, you must ensure the same. A cuff that fits you only loosely will not give you correct readings
Make sure that the device you are finally purchasing has been ‘CLINICALLY VALIDATED? by the British Hypertension Society. This mark on your device means that it has undergone a series of tests to ensure that you get the most reliable readings.

Now that you know about the various types of home blood pressure monitors available in the market and the pros and cons associated with each, I do hope you will be able to buy one which suits you best, does not cause a dent in your savings and gives you reliable readings for many many years to come without the need to rush to your doctor every time you doubt that your blood pressure is not within the normal range!!!