An investigation into the accuracy of different types of medical devices used in measurement of blood pressure, temperature and blood glucose

Background: A variety of methods are now available to measure blood pressure, blood glucose and body temperature using different devices. As an example, blood pressure can be measured by the standard mercury sphygmomanometer method, it can also be measured electronically. It is not known to what extent they are correlated with each other when used in our locality. Objectives: To compare the quality and accuracy of different methods used to measure blood pressure (manual versus automated office blood pressure measurements), blood glucose (glucometer with the laboratory reference method) and body temperature (glass mercury thermometer and digital thermometer). Methods: All measurements were done at Basrah General Hospital during the period from 5 of March to 15 of March, 2017. Measurements for each patient were performed by the same subject. Patients were selected from the surgical wards of Basrah General Hospital. Blood pressure was recorded using both automated oscillometric blood pressure device (Beurer blood pressure monitor) and the standard manual mercury sphygmomanometer for each patient. Blood glucose was estimated using the Accu-Chek glucometer and compared with laboratory data of the same hospital. Capillary blood samples were collected and checked on a glucometer and venous blood sample was sent to the laboratory for glucose estimation at the same time. The laboratory value was used as a reference for comparison. Temperature was recorded using glass mercury thermometer and two types of digital thermometers; one used on forehead (Pic thermometer) and the other used orally (Beurer thermometer). SPSS version 20 was used for statistical analysis. Results: There was no significant difference in the measurement of systolic and diastolic blood pressure by the two methods used in this study; mercury sphygmomanometer and automated oscillometric device (systolic blood pressure 127.75 ± 22.01 mercury versus 128.95 ± 18.7 electronic; similarly for diastolic). The two methods were significantly correlated with each other. Random blood glucose measured by a glucometer and a hospital laboratory method showed that glucometers gave significantly higher values by around 30%. Despite these higher readings, the two methods were still significantly correlated. The three methods used to measure body temperature showed a significant correlation with similar mean values (36.46 ± 0.58, 36.62 ± 0.57, and 36.41 ± 0.51 for forehead electronic, oral electronic, and oral mercury respectively). Conclusion: The methods used to measure blood pressure, blood glucose and body temperature are well correlated with each other, and gave approximately similar readings except the measurement of blood glucose by Accu-check glucometer which gave higher values than the reference laboratory method.