Monitoring Your BP At Home

Monitoring your blood pressure at home and can be a way to feel more in control of your own health and wellbeing. Your GP may even have recommended you take your own BP measurements at home so that you know your numbers.

But which home BP monitor to buy? There are so many now on the market, available from anywhere from your local supermarket to large online retailers. The options can seem over whelming. It needn’t be.

When choosing a BP monitor we would recommend you check for 3 things 

  1. Has it been clinically validated? This means it has been tested and approved by the British and Irish Hypertension Society (BIHS) and will it provide arcuate and reliable readings.
  2. Is it fully automatic as these are the easiest monitors to use at home.
  3. The cuff fits your arm. Cuffs come in a range of sizes but most monitors are supplied with a standard adult cuff which will fit an arm measuring 22-32cm. The cuff should wrap snugly around your upper arm, with just enough space to slide two fingertips underneath.

You can purchase an additional cuff which will fit your arm if your arm is either smaller or larger than a standard cuff size.

Or look for a monitor with a wider range cuff such as the A&D Medical UA 767S-W which is supplied with a wide ranging cuff which will fit an arm measuring 22-42 cm. For more of the monitors features Click here

The A&D Medical UA 767S + AFib is a popular choice for its proven record of reliability and wide use across the UK with GP surgeries and within the NHS. It also comes with a 5 year warranty. For more of the monitors features Click here 

PMS Instruments can supply you with a BP monitor to suit you, your needs and your budget.

Know Your Numbers Week 12 – 18th September

The 12th to the 18th of September this year sees the return of ‘Know your Numbers’, a Blood Pressure UK run awareness campaign to promote blood pressure testing. KYN was first launched in 2001 and has since gone on to encourage around 1.5 million people to have their blood pressure checked. The idea is that we should all know our blood pressures like we know our height and weight.

For me, that’s a great analogy. If you weigh yourself and realise you’ve put on a few pounds, then you might start eating a bit differently or moving a bit more. The difference, however, is that with weight gain you have a visual clue before anything else. Blood Pressure is only known once tested, but knowing those figures and tracking the changes could one day save your life.

As part of KYN week, ‘Pressure Stations’ will be setup all around the country at the more obvious venues such as GP surgeries, hospitals and health clubs, but also shopping centres and supermarkets, so it should be easy for everyone to get checked out.

At P.M.S (Instruments), we think this is a great initiative, and hope it does it a lot of good, but we can’t forget that we’re here to supply both surgeries with the equipment they need and also those at home or in the private healthcare sector. With that in mind, we’d like to share some news on two great new products.

The A&D TM-2657P is the follow up to the TM-2655P, popular with GPs as it saves consultation time. This is particularly useful at this time of year when it comes to screening elderly patients who are having the flu jab in large volumes. My favourite new feature of this machine is the added value of the Irregular Heartbeat Indicator (IHB) function – a highly useful new feature. Check out the write up below for some more specs!

The other great new Blood Pressure Monitor is the A&D UA-767-S, which is the latest in a generation of models of the same name. This is a really portable BPM, which makes it perfect for either home use, those who are regularly out and about on home visits or just in the surgery. Another brilliant bit of kit from A&D, again, check below for full specs!

Here at PMS, we’re proud to have a 40 year plus history of supplying technology you can trust. We’ve been the main A&D UK distributer since 1990 (A&D have been making Blood Pressure Monitors since 1979) so we can guarantee the best equipment and a genuine pedigree. For is, this is the perfect marriage to support the upcoming Know Your Numbers week.

 

A&D TM-2657PA&D TM-2657P – For Waiting Room Use

Key features

  • User-friendly with small footprint
  • BHS AA grade clinical validation 
  • Simple one-touch fully automatic measurement
  • Accurate and reliable Torque Controlled Belt drive Method
  • Antibacterial inner arm cuff cover
  • Easy load paper tray
  • Reliable high speed printer with easy paper replacement
  • Irregular Heart Beat (IHB) indicated on printout

 

The TM-2657P is the latest waiting room blood pressure monitor from A&D Medical. It builds on the speed, reliability and accuracy of the previous TM-2655P, which it replaces, but now features a new ergonomic, modern, compact design. The new integrated armrest helps ensure the patient’s arm is comfortable and in the correct position during a measurement.

A new antibacterial arm cuff cover is also now fitted as standard with the TM-2657P. Designed and engineered in Japan, the new TM-2657P has a faster printout speed and offers added optional connectivity features including Bluetooth.

The “Torque Controlled Belt drive Method” (TCBM) cuff mechanism in the TM-2657P provides sophisticated automatic cuff size adjustment, ensuring the arm is positioned correctly for accurate high speed measurement, first time, every time.

With a centrally located simple one-button operation, it can be used on children (13 years or above) and adults with either the left or right arm. After the reading, the results are output to the inbuilt thermal printer with the date, time systolic, diastolic and pulse rate clearly displayed. New printing options also permit the inclusion of a barcode or QR code on the print out.

The printout will also display (if present) an irregular heartbeat symbol. An irregular heartbeat is defined as a heartbeat that varies by 25% from the average of all heartbeats during the blood pressure measurement.

Like the previous model, the TM-2657P looks set to be popular with GP Practices looking for a clinically validated, easy to use professional waiting room blood pressure monitor.

 

 

Key features

  • Compact size and weight (140(w) x 60(h) x 105(d) mm weighs (245g) ex batteries
  • Advanced Oscillometric method for hospital accuracy
  • 60 reading memory with average
  • Correct cuff fit and movement detector
  • Irregular heartbeat indicator with frequency detected
  • WHO blood pressure classification index
  • European Society of Hypertension International Protocol clinical validation
  • Five- year warranty
  • Battery or mains (optional extra) operation

The frequency of IHB (Irregular Heart Beat) detection is divided into different grades and shown by icons.

  • 0-24% : No Indication
  • 25-49% : Grade 1
  • 50-74% : Grade 2
  • 75-100% : Grade 3

The latest A&D Medical UA-767S builds on the popularity, accuracy and reliability of the original UA-767 series but it adds additional new advanced features. It is a popular upper arm blood pressure monitor with a 60 reading memory with averaging function, cuff fit and movement error functions and a simple one-button operation. This model features a new Irregular Heartbeat Indicator (IHB) function, which identifies the frequency of IHB by dividing the number of IHBs by the total number of readings taken to grade the occurrence of IHB accordingly. The more frequent the IHB appears the greater the risk. This feature is for monitoring purposes only. The UA-767S is supplied with a standard 22-32cm cuff. For customers with a larger arm we recommend the UA-767S-W, which has a 22-42cm cuff. It has a proven reliability record and is used extensively in the UK.