Blood Pressure Monitoring Systems
Blood pressure refers to the force exerted by circulating blood on the walls of blood vessels, and constitutes one of the principal vital signs. The pressure of the circulating blood decreases as blood moves through arteries, arterioles, capillaries, and veins; the term blood pressure generally refers to arterial pressure, i.e., the pressure in the larger arteries, arteries being the blood vessels which take blood away from the heart. Arterial pressure is most commonly measured via a sphygmomanometer, which historically used the height of a column of mercury to reflect the circulating pressure. Today blood pressure values are reported in millimetres of mercury (mmHg), though aneroid and electronic devices do not use mercury.
The systolic arterial pressure is defined as the peak pressure in the arteries, which occurs near the beginning of the cardiac cycle; the diastolic arterial pressure is the lowest pressure (at the resting phase of the cardiac cycle).
Typical values for a resting, healthy adult human are approximately 120 mmHg systolic and 80 mmHg diastolic with large individual variations. These measures of arterial pressure are not static, but undergo natural variations from one heartbeat to another and throughout the day (in a circadian rhythm); they also change in response to stress, nutritional factors, drugs, or disease. Hypertension refers to arterial pressure being abnormally high, as opposed to hypotension, when it is abnormally low. Along with body temperature, blood pressure measurements are the most commonly measured physiological parameters.
Hypertension is one of the most dreaded disease condition and an estimated 600 million persons around the globe are hypertensive. Out of these,a major fraction are still undiagnosed and are not monitored on a regular basis.
MicroGene recognizes the need for options of self monitoring of blood pressure and offers a wide variety of such systems according to the requirements of an individual. The various models available with MicroGene are