| Keywords |
Wearable blood pressure monitor ; Hypertensive elderly ; Clothing microclimate ; Aneroid sphygmomanometers ; Pulse frequency |
| Abstract |
This study was conducted both to evaluate the validity of a recently developed a smart watch for measuring blood pressure and pulse, and to examine effects of clothing microclimate on blood pressure in hypertensive elderly individuals. Twenty two older males (76.2±4.0 yr) and 22 older females (73.1±5.7 yr) participated in this study. The experiment was conducted in a climatic chamber (an air temperature 20.0±0.1oC with 51±2% RH) for 150 min. Three types of sphygmomanometers (wearable blood pressure monitor [WS], automatic digital blood pressure monitor [OM], manual sphygmomanometer of aneroid type [AS]) were compared. Blood pressures were measured three times with each sphygmomanometer during the initial and last 60 min of the 90 min, respectively. Systolic and diastolic blood pressures in the cool condition were higher than those in the comfortable condition for all the three sphygmomanometers (P<0.05). However, there were statistical differences in blood pressure among the three sphygmomanometers (P<0.05). When compared, the Bland-Altman plots of WS and AS, and WS and OM, respectively, had wider ranges in the 95% limit of agreement (LoA), while OM and AS had narrow ranges in 95% LoA and showed uniform distribution without any tendency. When compared to automatic or manual aneroid sphygmomanometers, blood pressure estimated by WS had limited application for the hypertensive elderly. On the other hand, as for pulse frequency, WS and OM showed good precision, narrow ranges in 95% LoA and uniform distribution. These results showed that while the wearable blood pressure monitor did not measure blood pressure accurately, it did measure pulse frequency accurately. |