Abstract
Blood pressure of Japanese male and female subjects with various arm size was experimentally measured with cuffs of various length and width and the following results were obtained.
1) In subjects with large arm, readings of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure were higher with the shorter cuff and lower with the long cuff. If cuffs longer than 26 cm were used, the variation of blood pressure reading resulting from the use of different length of cuff became very small and negligible even in subjects with arm of more than 30 cm in circumference.
2) The readings of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure were unlimitedly lower if the wider cuff was used. Both in male and female subjects, this relation between width of cuff and blood pressure reading was found to be almost same in any arm size group.
From the point of view that size of cuff should be standardized to minimize the systematic errors resulting from the use of different size of cuff, the authors suggested that the length and width of cuff for Japanese adults should be strictly fixed to 26 cm and 14 cm respectively.
The reasons for the choice of this standard were also discussed.
