Non‐invasive vs. invasive beat‐to‐beat monitoring of blood pressure

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Abstract
Summary. The present study focuses on the accuracy in tracing fast beat‐to‐beat changes in blood pressure using a non‐invasive technique. The measurements using a commercially available apparatus (Finapres, Ohmeda, USA) were compared to ipsilateral intra‐arterial radial pressure. Eight patients were studied at rest, during deep breathing with a fixed rate of 6 breaths min‐1, and during an exercise test on an ergometer cycle. A total of 900 systolic pressure values were included for statistical evaluation, covering a pressure range of 86–266 mmHg. On average the systolic correlation coefficient for the whole material was 0.97, with a range of 0.94–0.996. For mean pressure the correlation coefficient was on average 0.97, and for diastolic pressure 0.93. No systematic difference between the non‐invasive and the invasive method was found, although for each individual patient a difference between direct and indirect measured blood pressure existed that could be relatively large (systolic pressure: average difference = 0.8 mmHg, SD = 16 mmHg). We found the method easy to handle and consider it excellently suited to track relative changes in blood pressure.