A lot of the blood pressure devices available online aren’t reliable
By Wendy Haaf
If you’re thinking about buying an at-home device to monitor your blood pressure, you’d be well-advised to avoid ordering one online, according to the results of an Australian study.
Researchers dug into the documentation of 972 such devices available for purchase on the Internet from 59 online vendors to see whether they’d been properly validated for accuracy. Of these monitors, 278 used an upper-arm cuff, and 162, a wrist cuff; 532 were wearable wristband models.
Fewer than seven per cent—including none of the wristband devices—were found to be accurate. The results were published in the online journal Hypertension.
You can find a list of blood pressure monitors recommended by Hypertension Canada at hypertension.ca.
Photo: iStock/simpson33.
