One in seven Australian adults suffers from some form of high blood pressure, or hypertension (as it’s known medically). If you’re one of them, monitoring your condition regularly at home with a blood pressure monitor can be useful.
There are three types: automatic arm, automatic wrist and manual arm. Automatic models inflate the cuff automatically, whereas manual models require you to inflate it yourself by pumping a bulb.
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If you’ve been diagnosed with hypertension, discuss with your GP whether you should measure your blood pressure at home, how often and at what times:
- It can help give you a better understanding of your condition, and motivate you to lower your blood pressure by changing your lifestyle.
- It provides your GP with additional measurements that they can use to monitor your condition or adjust your medication.
- Some people can’t help getting nervous when visiting a doctor, which increases their blood pressure: it’s called ‘white-coat hypertension’. If this happens to you, measuring blood pressure in the more relaxed environment of your home may be a better way for you to get accurate readings.
Models tested
- A&D Medical UA-767 Plus
- A&D Medical UA-851
- ALP K2-1702 #
- Beurer BC 08 #
- Beurer BM16 #
- Heart Sure BP100 #
- Homedics BPA-110 #
- Kinetik BPM1C #
- LifeLine AI-R970 #
- Microlife BP A100 Plus
- Microlife BP W100 #
- Omron SEM-1 Standard #
- Omron IW1 #
- Sanitas SBM 29 #
# Discontinued.
How we test
Performance We assembled nine people of varying ages for
this test. Our tester, Peter Horvath, tests the accuracy of each blood
pressure monitor against a recently calibrated hospital grade blood
pressure monitor. He uses the hospital grade monitor and then each
monitor on each triallist one at a time, and averages the number of
readings taken and scores accordingly. Average measurements varied
between 3.5mm/Hg and 8.1mm/Hg, well within the AMA’s recommendations.
Ease of use
Our tester looks at a number of elements when using the blood pressure
monitor, including the instructions, ease of fitting and operating the
monitor, comfort, screen quality and the information displayed on the
screen.
Thank you
Thanks to GE Healthcare who kindly lent us the hospital-grade monitor with which we compared the domestic blood pressure monitors.
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