Grant: Knowledge Synthesis Grant

Over 7 million Canadians have high blood pressure. High blood pressure increases the chances of getting strokes or heart attacks. Thankfully, it is possible to follow and treat high blood pressure to reduce the chances of getting those dangerous diseases. The best way to follow blood pressure is to measure it correctly. Recommendations on how to follow and treat blood pressure are based on values of blood pressure measured with an old technique using a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff. New, modern techniques exist (automatic cuffs at the clinic, a machine that measures blood pressure throughout the day, and a machine that measures blood pressure at home). But, there is a problem: we do not know for sure what are the exact values of blood pressure in the new techniques that correspond to certain values of blood pressure in the old technique, and so we estimate them. The MeasureBP study wants to fix this problem. We want to get all the research studies ever done that compared blood pressure taken with the new techniques to blood pressure taken using the old technique. We will ask the researchers who did these studies to give us their individual values. Then we will calculate the equivalent value from any of the new techniques to the old one. This will help professionals to follow and treat people with high blood pressure better. It will also help nurses, pharmacists and the patients themselves. These new ways to calculate the blood pressure values will become part of the recommendations that doctors use, and we will add them on reference websites to improve teaching. We will also make paper and electronic flyers for patients to improve how they measure their blood pressure at home. The team behind the MeasureBP study writes the recommendations for high blood pressure in Canada. We will make sure continuously that as many doctors and patients as possible are aware of the new recommendations that will improve the management of high blood pressure and save lives.