Casual Blood Pressure Methodology.

The concept of measuring blood pressure (BP) has significantly evolved over the past two centuries, overcoming the challenge posed by the well-established, but clearly subjective, art of palpation of the pulse for `measures΄ other than simply determining heart rate. In the United States, the BP cuff was introduced by Cushing in Baltimore in 1901 and in Boston in 1903 (1,2) when he returned from a trip to Italy with a version of a Riva-Rocci mercury sphygmomanometer. Recognizing the obstacles to be overcome, Cushing noted, ˵The belief is more or less prevalent that the powers of observation so markedly developed in our predecessors have, to a large extent, become blunted in us, owing to the employment of instrumental aids to exactness, and the art of medicine consequently has always adopted them with considerable reluctance″ (2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]