Excited to be participating at the European Society of Hypertension meeting here in Oslo, Norway through our local distributor Enimed.  It is a good meeting with thought leaders from across Europe and beyond discussing important questions related to the important issue of hypertension and how to better diagnose and treat patients.

An excellent interview by Drs. Black and White at the American Society of Hypertension regarding Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring is available here.  Login required - free signup.

In the interview, Dr. White refers to a watch BP device that presents a noval approach to ABPM.  While we agree that getting rid of a cuff inflating and deflating would be a great advancement in determining blood pressure, from what we have seen and heard, this watch device is not practical in real-life.  A tonometer pressing on the radial artery over an extended timeframe has proven unbearable over more than a few hours - resulting in lack of patient compliance, incomplete data and/or inaccurate masurements that are very susciptible to movement.  The validity of this device and its readings have also been called into question in scientific assessments in Europe.  We know of several similiar efforts here in the US or internationally which have involved millions of dollars of investment to take such a concept to market without much success.  Brachial measurements using a cuff are still the gold standard for determining blood pressure measurements accurately and with the highest compliance.

We were pleased to see this article on BBC about the While Coat effect.  Better education and awareness of the general public on this issue will provide better compliance and lower cardiovascular risk.

 

We just came back from the 25th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hypertension in New York where we made some important announcements and had good meetings with customers and partners.  Beyond the bomb scare - which happened as some of our staff were eating dinner near Times Square - there was a wealth of information and events focused on hypertension and blood pressure monitoring including several talks and posters on the prognostic value of ABPM in predicting mortality and morbidity in patients. There were literally hundreds of presentations, talks, posters and other scientific discussions which were shared at this important gathering of hypertension thought leaders from across the US and beyond.  While there is no easy way to encapsulate all of this information in a brief account, we are happy to have had a chance to catch up with two of our customers and hear their perspectives via the videos below.

On the heels of healthcare reform legislation in the United States, we came across some very interesting statistics regarding the 10 most frequent outpatient diagnosis and their average cost.  The American Hospital Directory conducted an analysis of the Medicare Outpatient Prospective Payment System most current report. These are the results of their findings, highlighting the top 10 most frequent outpatient diagnosis and their associated costs. The analysis was done according to each condition’s ICD-9 billing codes.

Diagnosis	Claims	Average Cost
Hypertension, unspecified	1,000,618	$708
Chest pain, unspecified	795,020	$3,205
Lower back pain	671,255	$1,353
Atrial fibrillation	661,278	$1,250
Abdominal pain, unspecified site	661,273	$2,315
Pain in limb	648,990	$900
Diabetes mellitus, without mention of complication	609,917	$418
Cough	551,205	$543
Malignant neoplasm of prostate	527,365	$5,096
Anemia, unspecified	510,670	$2,110
Source: American Hospital Directory

A number of key opinion leaders and hypertension experts as well as several scientific societies in the US and Europe have already weighed in on this subject.  As an example, please see Dr. Eoin O'Brien's excellent article in Hypertension a Journal of the American Heart Association titled "Is the Case for ABPM as Routine Investigation in Clinical Practice Not Overwhelming?"  We could not agree more.