“Do I Have to Take Off My Shirt?”

Measuring blood pressure on a sleeved arm violates long-established guidelines for this procedure, but, in busy clinical settings, it’s done all the time. Does taking the time to extract patients’ arms from their sleeves really make any difference?

Canadian researchers used automatic oscillometric cuffs to obtain two blood pressure measurements — taken 3 minutes apart — in 376 adult medical-clinic patients. In 180, both measurements were performed on unsleeved arms, and, in 196, the second reading was taken on sleeved arms. In both groups, the mean systolic and diastolic values in the second reading were slightly lower than those from the first (as would be expected after more time in a seated position); however, the presence of sleeves resu…