Significant effects on the blood pressure of an apparently trivial atrial dysrhythmia

Continuous automatic monitoring and recording, at slow paper speed, of the intra-arterial blood pressure revealed serious disturbances in blood pressure in a small number of patients undergoing general anesthesia. In all instances, the underlying mechanism was found to be a rhythm disturbance so trivial as to have escaped earlier detection by means of conventional audio-visual monitoring. The practice of routine monitoring and recording of the intra-arterial blood pressure would appear to receive support from these findings.