Who invented blood pressure apparatus

Current Issue. Past Issues. Online First. For Authors. Submit an Article. Hong Kong Med J Oct;26 5 : —9. Hong Kong Academy of Medicine. Stephen Hales is known as the first person to directly measure the blood pressure in a horse, in the 18th century. It was not until the next century when the sphygmograph was invented to record the blood pressure indirectly.

In the s, von Basch introduced his sphygmomanometer, which recorded the pressure need to obliterate the radial pulse using a device similar to the aneroid barometer.

In , Hill and Barnard reported in the British Medical Journal their version of sphygmomanometer using an arm cuff and a tambour as pressure gauge. The invention of the device we know today as the blood pressure monitor came in stages, with many inventors responsible for the general ideas that brought us this basic building block of health.

According to a retrospective written by Jeremy Booth for Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine , it took centuries to figure out a repeatable way of testing blood pressure. While complex, it was a major upgrade from the kymograph, an invasive predecessor to the sphygmograph developed less than a decade earlier. But it is Samuel Siegfried Karl Ritter von Basch, an Austrian physician, whose device was the first to carry the sphygmomanometer name, and also the first to use an inflatable rubber bag — a key element of the modern sphygmomanometer.

The Italian internist responsible for the evolution, Scipione Riva-Rocci, designed a mercury-based pump between and , greatly simplifying an object that had evolved through many complex forms over a year period. The next major milestone in blood pressure measurement was made by Samuel Siegfriend Ritter von Basch in It was then that he first described the sphygmomanometer, which consisted of a water-filled bulb connected to a manometer.

The manometer was used to determine the amount of pressure required to obliterate the pulse, done by hand above the placed instrument. Again, although a useful advance in science, the instrument was difficult to use in day-to-day clinical practice.

Unlike many earlier attempts, a breakthrough came in when Scipione Riva-Rocci introduced the mercury sphygmomanometer. Riva-Rocci published four articles in the Gazzetta Medica Di Torino ; two discussed his new sphygmomanometer and two, the methods for using it to measure blood pressure. His new instrument used an inflatable cuff to obliterate the brachial artery and incorporated a mercury manometer.

Despite this breakthrough in design, all of these instruments could only provide physicians with readings of systolic blood pressure, not diastolic.

The measurement of both diastolic and systolic blood pressure is most often credited to Nicolai Korotkoff. In , he presented a paper to the Imperial Military Academy detailing a new technique for measuring blood pressure that incorporated the use of the newly popularized stethoscope. An early sphygmomanometer of the von Basch design. Harvey Cushing first brought a Riva-Rocci cuff to the United States in as a method to reduce mortality while patients were under anesthesia during his early experiments with intracranial surgeries.

Still, the 2-inch wide cuff is not big enough to provide accurate measures. Harvey Williams Cushing , a famous neurosurgeon, introduced blood pressure measurement to North America and helped spread the use in the western world. Russian physician Nikolai Korotkov was able to measure the diastolic blood pressure in using his improved version of the sphygmomanometer. Japanese company Panasonic released a compact and automatic wrist cuff to measure your blood pressure.

Thanks to the Bluetooth technology that was added, this model offered more compatibility options. Hi there! Feel free to stick around and read this, but you should know that we have an all-new, updated and revised history of the blood pressure monitor , and it includes Wonder Woman!