Effect of Hearing Disorder on Accuracy of Blood PressureAssessment by the Auscultation Method

Overview

medical diagnostics although technicaldevelopment and automation of diagnostic methods steadily reduce their importance. Duringcommon examination of the blood pressure by auscultation an important part is played by thehearing of the examining person. The objective of the authors was to assess whether and to whatextent impaired hearing can cause inaccuracies of blood pressure readings.First the authors assessed the values of acoustic pressure of Korotkoff’s phenomena which developdue to the pressure of the cuff on the artery. They found that their level increases briskly from thefirst panetration of blood into the artery, it rapidly reaches the maximum, then it declines relativelyslowly till it disappears. The maximum sound intensity ocours in the region at about 125 Hz. Basedon the assessed facts it may be assumed that in hypacusia of the examiner a greater error ariseswhen taking the diastolic blood pressure reading. This assumption was confirmed by clinicalexperiments. A person with hypacusia takes higher readings in particular of the diastolic pressureand this may lead to an incorrect diagnosis of hypertension in particular in normotonic subjects.In marked hypacusia the systolic pressure readings assessed by the auscultation method are lower,those of the diastolic pressure are markedly higher.

Key words:
assessment of blood pressure, Korotkoff’s sounds, auscultation method, hypacusia.