Accuracy of blood pressure measurement across BMI categories using the OptiBP™ mobile application.

Purpose: Obesity is a clear risk factor for hypertension. Blood pressure (BP) measurement in obese patients may be biased by cuff size and upper arm shape which may affect the accuracy of measurements. This study aimed to assess the accuracy of the OptiBP smartphone application for three different body mass index (BMI) categories (normal, overweight and obese).

Blood pressure measurements with the OptiBP smartphone app validated against reference auscultatory measurements.

Mobile health diagnostics have been shown to be effective and scalable for chronic disease detection and management. By maximizing the smartphones' optics and computational power, they could allow assessment of physiological information from the morphology of pulse waves and thus estimate cuffless blood pressure (BP). We trained the parameters of an existing pulse wave analysis algorithm (oBPM), previously validated in anaesthesia on pulse oximeter signals, by collecting optical signals from 51 patients fingertips via a smartphone while simultaneously acquiring BP measurements through an arterial catheter.

[How to start an antihypertensive treatment: from evidence to personalized choice].

Considering the high prevalence of hypertension among general population, the general practitioner is frequently challenged to start an antihypertensive therapy, which aims to lower blood pressure and to reduce the cardiovascular risk. At the initial stage, several critical questions must be asked : « Is a pharmacological treatment necessary ? », « Which are the target blood pressures ? » and « Which antihypertensive drug should be chosen to start therapy ? »The aim of this article is to give general practicioners some practical tools to guide them in the initial management of hypertensive patients.