Hypertension Diagnosis: A Review on Techniques to Measure Blood Pressure

Hypertension is both a symptom and a cause of health complications. The consequences of long-term hypertension are more documented than short-term hypertension, so detection methods emphasize the presence of long-term hypertension. These methods require confirmation of consistently high blood pressure. Thus, established methods require long-term observation of the patient, which poses the risk of starting treatment too late for effective mitigation. These methods are also not portable enough for long-term observation to be comfortable. The goals of on-going research into detection of hypertension are the confirmation of hypertension with shorter durations of observation, and comfortable and convenient methods of frequent blood pressure checks. Future methods that are promising include wearable non-auscultatory sensors, AI-assisted comparisons of short-term observation data against databases of readings, and small implants.