Taking blood pressure in noisy settings doesn't affect reading, study shows
NEW YORK, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- The next time you take your blood pressure in a supermarket or drugstore, don't worry about noise affecting the reading much -- it doesn't. A new study found a minor difference between blood pressure measurements taken in public spaces compared to those in private offices.
The results, published Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine, indicate that public settings can be suitable for blood pressure screenings, despite earlier guidelines that endorsed quiet surroundings.
These findings support implementing mass screening programs in public spaces and promoting broader outreach, researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said.
"It can be challenging to measure blood pressure in quiet, private environments as recommended by clinical guidelines, particularly in busy clinics, under-resourced settings and during large-scale screening events," the study's senior author, Dr. Tammy Brady, told UPI.
Many alternative settings for blood pressure screenings -- pharmacies, schools and places of worship -- don't simply have noise, said Brady, a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins. She's also medical director of the pediatric hypertension program at Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
"Recognizing the important role of these environments for cardiovascular disease prevention, we wanted to determine what effect loud or noisy environments had on blood pressure measurement accuracy," she said.
About 1.4 billion people have high blood pressure across the globe, but only 50% know this, and just 20% have it under control, Brady noted.
"This is one of the reasons that cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death," she said. "Expanding the reach of hypertension screening efforts is one way in which we can improve cardiovascular health worldwide."
Brady and her colleagues randomly assigned 108 adults in Baltimore to test blood pressure under three conditions: private quiet office, public space without earplugs (noisy public) and public space with earplugs (quiet public) to evaluate the effect of noise and public environment on the readings.
The average noise level in the private quiet setting was 37 decibels, and the average noise level in the public setting was 74 decibels.
In the private quiet setting, the average systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure were 128.9 and 74.2 millimeters of mercury, respectively. In the public loud setting, the averages were 128.3 and 75.9 mm Hg. And in the public quiet setting, the averages were 129.0 and 75.7 mm Hg.
The differences in readings in public, loud spaces versus the clinically recommended setting of a private office are small and not clinically significant, the researchers said.
The answer to whether noise impacts blood pressure is "not as much as we previously thought," said Dr. Joseph Ebinger, an associate professor of cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. He was not involved in the study.
"The authors paid careful attention to other factors that may influence blood pressure when checked outside of the clinic -- type of machine used, recent participant activity, measurement technique -- to ensure focus on the noise itself," Ebinger said.
While professional guidelines call for measuring blood pressure in a quiet, private space, typically a doctor's office, "Anything we can do to better identify people who have high blood pressure to get them on a treatment pathway sooner rather than later will be impactful in reducing risk of heart failure and stroke, said Dr. James Udelson, chief of cardiology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.
Dr. Mohammed Rafey, a hypertension specialist at the University of Chicago Medicine, noted the study's results are based only on one location. A small sample size -- slightly more than 100 participants, 84.3% of whom were Black -- was another limitation, Rafey noted.
Dr. Todd Perlstein of Tri-City Cardiology, a private practice in Mesa, Ariz., said "it would be interesting to potentially evaluate if the type of noise has an effect. For example, does loud traffic noise differ from music or other less abrasive sounds?"
