Blood Pressure Monitoring App

[meleagertoo]

I'm trying to find an app to record and display blood pressure readings on macbook and/or iphone.

It needs to accept manually inputted data - not interfaced with a bp machine or smartwatch.

Any leads?

[Abrahn]

Probably overkill if you don't have any of the rest of their stuff but Garmin Connect lets you manually log blood pressure readings, you don't need to use Garmin's cuff.

Otherwise your favourite spreadsheet?

[First.officer]

Hi meleagertoo,

I made myself on to use as a .pdf form - see attached - feel free to use, try with (free) Adobe Reader download, if not - PDF Expert will certainly work. You manually fill-in the reading you get, and it (.pdf form) will work out the weekly average for you (suspect Adobe Reader won't work to that degree, but give it a go and see).

F/o

[meleagertoo]

Brilliant! Just what I need! A heartbeat column would be handy but this is just the job. Thanks.

[First.officer]

Brilliant! Just what I need! A heartbeat column would be handy but this is just the job. Thanks.

Not a problem....if you want a heartbeat column, see attached file instead :ok:.

[meleagertoo]

Now this is going to sound cheeky...can it be made to calculate the averages - preferably for all 7 days per week?
That'd save a lot of time!

[First.officer]

All 7-days of the week - assume this is what you meant? :ok: (see attached - NOTE: avg. values only appear correctly if ALL fields have a suitable recorded value entered).

[meleagertoo]

You're a star! Thanks v much

[Radgirl]

Can I please just add some comments? All we need is the systolic and diastolic reading. The mean is derived and the pulse is irrelevant. More importantly the average has no clinical value because BP varies with activity and time. Remember on Apollo launches we had BPs of over 250 systolic and 120 diastolic and yet we have followed this group and they have had normal lifespans.

What is useful is to take the BP a couple of times a week over several weeks at different times; record systolic, diastolic, time of day and what you are doing - watching TV, waking up, just done an hour in the gym. We are interested in the lowest resting reading and if you can get your BP normal by relaxation then your doctor should have low blood pressure too!

Once you have demonstrated your BP is in an acceptable range you can stop and I only test annually. Hypertension is gradual in onset and I have better things to do....

As a doctor I am particularly interested in the diastolic or lower reading. We really want it to start with a 7 until you are in your 60s and never more than an 8. We know that a raised diastolic which has an association with raised resistance in the circulation correlates with an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. The systolic is less important but I would treat a systolic above 150 and a diastolic above the low 80s (slightly more in the older patient...) given that single drug therapy is low risk and we can normally find a drug that produces minimal side effects. Importantly there is no evidence one class of drug is better than another! so if one drug doesnt suit or work try another. finally if your readings are raised please see your doctor - most hypertension is just age - what we call essential hypertension - but a small number of patients may have a cause such as renal or endocrine disease so we normally run a few blood tests and do a baseline ECG.