The cuffless SOMNOtouch NIBP device shows poor agreement with a validated oscillometric device during 24‐h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring

Repeated cuff-based blood pressure (BP) measurements may cause discomfort resulting in stress and erroneous recording values. SOMNOtouch NIBP is an alternative cuff-less BP measurement device that calculates changes in BP based on changes in pulse transit time (PTT) and a software algorithm. The device is calibrated with a single upper arm cuff-based BP measurement. We tested the device against a validated 24-h ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM) device using both the previous (SomBP1) and the current software algorithm (SomBP2). In this study, 51 patients (mean age ± SD 61.5 ± 13.0 years) with essential hypertension underwent simultaneous 24-h ABPM with the SOMNOtouch NIBP on the left arm and a standard cuff-based oscillometric device on the right arm (OscBP). We found that mean daytime systolic BP (SBP) with OscBP was 140.8 ± 19.7 compared to 148.0 ± 25.2 (P = .008) and 146.9 ± 26.0 mmHg (P = .034) for SomBP1 and SomBP2, respectively. Nighttime SBP with OscBP was 129.5 ± 21.1 compared with 146.1 ± 25.8 (P < .0001) and 141.1 ± 27.4 mmHg (P = .001) for SomBP1 and SomBP2, respectively. Ninety-five% limits of agreement between OscBP and SomBP1 were ± 36.6 mmHg for daytime and ± 42.6 mmHg for nighttime SBP, respectively. Agreements were not improved with SomBP2. For SBP, a nocturnal dipping pattern was found in 33% of the study patients when measured with OscBP but only in 2% and 20% with SomBP1 and -2, respectively. This study demonstrates that BP values obtained with the cuff-less PTT-based SOMNOtouch device should be interpreted with caution as these may differ substantially from what would be obtained from a validated cuff-based BP device.