The effect of sleeved arms on oscillometric blood pressure measurement

The authors measured the blood pressures of 36 subjects who had bare and sleeved arms to determine the effect of wearing sleeves on automatic oscillometric blood pressure measurements. They found no statistically significant effect of sleeves on the measurement of either systolic or diastolic blood pressure (p > 0.15). However, based on confidence intervals of possible sleeve effects, the authors recommend repeating blood pressure measurements on bared arms when the sleeved-arm oscillometric measurements are at least 86 mm Hg diastolic or 135 mm Hg systolic.