How To Read Blood Pressure
And Get An Accurate Reading

Much goes into an accurate high blood pressure measurements. It also requires a properly working instrument and a blood pressure chart for recording your readings.

Blood Pressure Instruments

There are so many different instruments on the market now for taking your blood pressure measurements but I'll tell you how to read blood pressure using the most accurate ones.

W. A. Baum Desk Clinical Sphygmomanometer, Large Arm, Calibrated V - Lok, 300 mmHg

Doctors uses a sphygmomanometer, such a big word, it is the Mercury blood pressure gauge that consists of a cuff that goes around your arm and above your elbow. Now this instrument is the gold standard for blood pressure measurement and very little can cause this device to malfunction because the only moving part is the column of mercury. Not many of us knows how to correctly read this blood pressure monitor.

Omron Aneroid Sphygmomanometer with Large Adult Nylon Cuff

Also, your blood pressure can be taken with any other electronic device for measuring your blood pressure so long as it is regularly calibrated and validated at your doctor's office.

How To Prepare For Your Blood Pressure Reading

Getting started on how to read blood pressure correctly by just following these simple rules:

• No smoking, drinking alcohol or coffee within fifteen minutes of taking your blood pressure measurements.


• The cuff should fit your arm. The length of the bladder should be 80% of the circumference of the upper arm. If your arm is heavy or very muscular you need a larger bladder, while children need a much smaller bladder.


• You should remain silent during the measurement.


• Your supported elbow should be at about the level of your heart.


• And relax for a minute before taking your measurement.

How To Read Your Blood Pressure Correctly

How to read blood pressure measurement accurately by following these steps:

1. You or another trained individual place the cuff over your bare arm, leaving the cuff's lower edge about an inch above the bend of the elbow. Close the cuff around the arm and then stick the Velcro together at the ends of the cuff.


2. The earpieces of the stethoscope goes into your ears, so you can hear the steady thump of your heart beat, and place the stethoscope bell at the side of the cuff away from your heart and over the brachial artery, which is the inner area of your bent elbow.


3. Tighten the screw at the side of the gauge's rubber bulb and then squeeze the bulb for air to be pumped into the bulb. The cuff will expands while your blood is flowing through your brachial artery. While the cuff is increasing you will not hear any sound in the stethoscope and no pulse can be felt in the wrist.


4. After the cuff increase to above the thirty millimeters of mercury, you turn the screw again, this time loosening the valve in the bulb, lessening the air pressure at the rate of two millimeters per second. You blood begins to flow through your artery again.


5. When you hear the first sound in the stethoscope, note the number beside the top of the mercury column. The first sound you hear from the stethoscope is your systolic blood pressure, the first number in your blood pressure reading.


6. When you no longer hear any sound, note that number beside the top of the mercury column. The cuff decompresses and your blood is flowing freely in your artery, this is the diastolic blood pressure, the second number in the blood pressure reading.


7. Record those number immediately on your blood pressure chart and also note which arm you took the measurements from whether it is your right or left arm.


8. If the first measurement is above 140 systolic or 90 diastolic, do take another measurement on the same arm after 60 seconds, then measure the other arm.

Usually the measurements of both arms are often the same. But the average of the two measurements in the arm that supplies the higher readings is the correct blood pressure, and that is how to read blood pressure accurately.

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