United States: Hypertension or pressure in the blood vessels could soon be managed by a wearable patch that has the size of a postage stamp.
A New Era in Blood Pressure Monitoring
The team behind the wearable ultrasound patch from the University of California, San Diego, shared on Nov. 20 in Nature Biomedical Engineering that the tool was tested on more than 100 patients, as reported by HealthDay.
A normal BP is 120/80 which helps to reduce risk of many diseases including cardiovascular disease, stroke, kidney disease, dementia and vision impairment hence the patients with high blood pressure use a cuff-and-meter equipment to check their pressure.
“Traditional blood pressure measurements with a cuff, which are limited to providing one-time blood pressure values, can miss critical patterns,” said study co-author Sai Zhou, who recently received his doctorate degree from the University of California, San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering.
“Our wearable patch offers a continuous stream of blood pressure waveform data, allowing it to reveal detailed trends in blood pressure fluctuations,” he added in a university news release.
How the Patch Works
It is a flexible, soft, skin-colored patch that has to be applied on the forearm, where it sticks until it is removed. Small transducers located within it transmit and receive ultrasound signals that monitor changes in the diameter of blood vessels. All these changes are reflected in terms of blood pressure values.
To augment, the developers stated that the patch delivers results similar to those of a standard flexible cuff and to an invasive, very accurate but intra-arterially placed catheter routinely used in intensive care units and operating rooms to continuously read pressure.
These tests were conducted on four post-surgical ICU patients and 21 patients who underwent cardiac catheterization; the values on the patch were not significantly different from those obtained from the arterial line. That, researchers said, shows its potential as a noninvasive therapeutic approach.
Real-World Versatility
They have applied the new patch while exercising, cycling, raising an arm or a leg, meditating, eating, and getting up from the sitting position. In all cases, it was found that readings were nearly similar to that of blood pressure cuffs, as reported by HealthDay.
“Blood pressure can be all over the place, depending on factors like white coat syndrome [being in a doctor’s office], masked hypertension, daily activities or use of medication, which makes it tricky to get an accurate diagnosis or manage treatment,” said Sheng Xu, a professor of chemical and nanoengineering at UC San Diego who developed the patch. “That’s why it was so important for us to test this device in a wide variety of real-world and clinical settings.”
His group now intends to carry out extensive clinical testing and improve the gadget.
