Clinical evaluation of the Philips 5306B electronic blood pressure monitor

A patient-recorded home blood pressure series using an electronic manometer is used increasingly to provide a representative sample of blood pressure (BP) and to avoid frequent office visits and office rises in BP. Few of the many available electronic manometers have undergone rigorous testing and validation against a standard mercury manometer. We have evaluated fully the commonly used Philips 5306B electronic manometer against a Hawksley random zero mercury manometer employing a randomized, single-blind, crossover design and statistical analyses that have been validated previously. Although correlation coefficients greater than 0.9 were achieved for both systolic and diastolic pressure, the electronic manometer gave systolic and diastolic readings that differed from the mercury manometer by greater than or equal to +/- 5 mmHg in some 33% of patients and by greater than or equal to +/- 1- mmHg in some 18% of patients. Thus, in common with most electronic manometers, the Philips 5306B needs to be improved to correlate more closely with the standard mercury manometer to enhance its clinical usefulness.