Blood pressure monitoring involves application of cuff to arm. One may be comfortable if its application is only for a while. But most of the patients feel uncomfortable to wear cuff for long time, especially those who need 24 hour ambulatory BP monitoring.

Ambulatory BP monitoring is useful in

• Pregnant patient with hypertension
• Borderline hypertension
• Difficulty in controlling BP with medication
• Blood pressure changes due to use of medications
• Syncope i.e. fainting episodes

These patients have good news!

Microsoft is coming with innovative device called “Glabella”. Glabella is a wearable glass device that continuously and unobtrusively monitors heart rates at three sites on the wearer’s head. There is no need to wear cuffs...

Glabella has optical sensors which continuously measure and store the user’s pulse waves at three different sites on their face. It also comprises inertial sensors and a processing unit that compares the continuously recorded pulse waves from reflected light intensities from blood flow to extract the user’s pulse transit time. Pulse transit time is the time taken by blood to reach from heart to the three sites. Users systolic BP is monitored using pulse transit time.

They believes ,the continuous monitoring with Glabella can open a new perspective on the detailed behaviour of the user’s blood pressure throughout the day in response to various activities, such as eating, walking, resting, working, and so on. Team is further working on reduction of size and optimisation of device to receive signals, its processing before introducing it into clinical practice.

Blood pressure monitoring is commonly done using sphygmomanometer .Parts of sphygmomanometer are:

• Cuff (a cloth-covered inflatable rubber bladder),
• Valved rubber bulb for inflating the cuff, and
• Manometer that measures the cuff pressure

Use of an appropriately sized cuff is mandatory for accurate BP measurement. If cuffs are too short or too narrow, BP is falsely recorded on higher side or vice versa.

Image source: christianholz.net