What is it about?
Palpation of the anaesthetized patient’s pulse at the wrist provides immediate access to an estimate of the patient's blood pressure within clinically relevant ranges. Coupled with knowledge of the patient’s history, this study showed that clinicians in the operating theatre can make an acceptable assessment of the patient's blood pressure 96.7% of the time, while awaiting confirmation from a regularly serviced, automated device. This is the only study of which we are aware where clinicians have attempted to make this estimate in anaesthetised patients. It lends credence to claims of accuracy in estimating SBP by radial arterial palpation.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
This paper does not attempt to change current clinical practice but reassures us that estimation of blood pressure can be done with the help of expert anaesthetists feeling the radial pulse. The study also highlights a small variation to the usual Bland-Altman plotting different treatments with different colours.
Perspectives
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Anaesthesia Clinicians Estimate Blood Pressure by Feeling the Radial Pulse: A Randomised, Controlled Trial, Biostatistics and Biometrics Open Access Journal, February 2018, Juniper Publishers,
DOI: 10.19080/bboaj.2018.05.555655.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page