Blog@SunTech Gets a New Look

Blog@SunTech is proud to launch a new look with some improved features for our readers.  Beginning tomorrow with our next blog post, you will receive a noticeably different email alert (for those of you with HTML enabled mail format).  

Please be on the look-out and add us to your “safe senders” list.  We have added some new features like “Categories” that allows you to easily find posts associated with our main product categories and a “Browse by Keyword” feature to help you find specific topic related posts. Both features can be accessed in the right side menus.  We hope that you enjoy the new format and find it more useful.  You’re invited to see the new look now at http://blog.suntechmed.com.

Implantable blood pressure monitors: Science fiction or reality?

At SunTech Medical, we’re always thinking about blood pressure (BP) and how current measurement tools and techniques might be improved. In many ways, “routine” blood pressure measurement hasn’t changed much over the last 100 years. But innovative tools like ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) have helped us learn about the importance of masked hypertension, overnight dipping, and blood pressure variability, their impact on clinical outcomes, and the subsequent guidance of hypertension treatment.

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The Different Types of Blood Pressure Cuffs on the Market

Most people think of a blood pressure (BP) cuff as simply, “just a cuff.” However, there are actually a number of BP cuffs that have been developed to meet the varying needs of patients and medical facilities. In an effort to shed more light on the different cuffs available for use, here is some detailed information on each type, how they are used and the typical environment in which each are used.

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SunTech Partner's Remote Patient Monitor Featured in the Economist

We love to highlight our partners’ achievements.  While some of these have been highly technical BP measurement endeavours in the pursuit of expanding scientific understanding such as experiments on the International Space Station or Mount Everest, the Economist trumpets one which may help anyone who travels by plane.  Congratulations to our colleagues at RDT!

Masked Hypertension: What You Don't Know Could Kill You

White-coat hypertension is a familiar term to most clinicians.  Patients with white-coat typically have elevated blood pressure measurements in the clinician’s office, but display normal BP measurements in their everyday environment.  The prevalence of white-coat hypertension varies from 15% to 20% of patients.  Conversely, there is another group of individuals whose hypertension often goes unnoticed by traditional methods of BP measurement.

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Automated BP vs Manual BP Measurement: Which is Better? (Part 2 of 2)

In my last post, I discussed the importance of informed debate in helping determine effective clinical practice. Specifically, I mentioned two recent journal articles about automated oscillometric blood pressure devices that arrived at two different conclusions. In that post I also provided some comments from the SunTech perspective. Today, I’ll share the perspectives of an experienced, practicing physician on the subject of automated BP devices versus manual sphygmomanometers.

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Automated BP vs Manual BP Measurement: Which is Better? (Part 1 of 2)

What’s a clinician to do? Debates about clinical trials, patient populations, and statistical analyses can seem hollow and distant when looking at an anxious patient in an exam room. At that moment, all that matters is what’s best for your patient. Yet clinically relevant data, and more importantly, rigorous discussion of that data, is the means to the end. Professional clinicians quite often need the former in order to effectively deliver the latter. To wit, two similar journal articles were recently published that arrived at two very different conclusions. Let’s take a look:

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Correctly Diagnosing High BP in Children: Help Needed!

We recently came across a video report that originally appeared shortly after an article on the underdiagnosis of hypertension in children and adolescents was published in the August 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The focal point of the report was the fact that 3 out of every 4 children who have high blood pressure have not been correctly diagnosed with the condition. This certainly would prompt the question “Why not?”

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Top 5 reasons your automated BP monitor gave an error code

“The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”  ~B.F. Skinner, Contingencies of Reinforcement, 1969

Sometimes, the more technology aims to help us, the more burden we take on to ensure it works. These days, automated blood pressure monitors are rapidly displacing mercury and aneroid sphygmomanometers in physician’s offices. As we move farther away from the 100 year old standard of listening for Korotkoff sounds to obtain a BP measurement, and towards the simple press of a button, there are a new set of usage factors that clinicians must remember when encountering problems.

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Canadian Blood Pressure Study of Obese Children Yields Unexpected Results

A recent Canadian blood pressure study discovered that high blood pressure does not directly correlate with the rising obesity rate in pediatric patient populations.  Contrary to expected research outcomes, while most pediatric patients (ages 6-19) with high blood pressure were obese, not all overweight adolescents (a mere 3%) suffer from high blood pressure.

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