Comparison of Sprint Trial Blood Pressure Methodology Versus Common Office Practice

Abstract

The SPRINT trial was a landmark study and appeared to set new aggressive goals for the treatment of hypertension. It relied upon an average of multiple blood pressure measurements taken with an automated blood pressure cuff with a noted cool-down period beforehand. Our study was designed to see if the values obtained in common office practice differed from the so called “research grade” numbers achieved in the SPRINT trial. To accomplish this, we had participants screened with a manual cuff pressure per normal clinic protocols. Their blood pressure was then assessed in a more structured method incorporating rest periods between successive measurements with an automatic cuff. The results showed that for mean-automatic--to-manual BP, a statistically significant difference was found for systolic differences (t = 3.992, df 51, p < 0.001). At the same time, neither the first-automatic-to-mean automatic BP matched pair differences were found to be statistically significant for either systolic (t = 0.167, df 51, p = 0.868) or diastolic (t = 0.235, df 51, p = 0.815) BP reading differences. We believe that applying the goals of the SPRINT trial within the context of manually obtained blood pressures will lead to discrepancies for clinicians. At the very least, a rest period with an undisturbed environment should be sought when taking blood pressures.