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What is Blood Pressure?

Our body cells need nutrients and oxygen to get their energy requirement by burning it; blood circulation provides this. Nutrient and oxygen-rich blood are transfer from the heart to all part of the body. Heart pumps out blood with some pressure so that it can easily reach extremes. During heart pumps, blood has pressure that exerts over the wall of the arteries called blood pressure.

High blood Pressure Means

For any reason, if the blood pressure stays higher for an extend-time, then call it as High Pressure. The medical term for high blood pressure is hypertension. If the blood pressure is between 140/90 and 159/99 mmHg, then it is considering as stage one hypertension.

Discovery of blood pressure

Stephen Hales, a British veterinarian who in 1733 inserted a brass pipe into the artery of a horse and connected the pipe to a glass tube. He noticed that the blood in the glass tube rose and concluded that pressure was pushing the blood. However, Hales had no way to measure the pressure and prove his theory.

How blood pressure did first record?

The first recording of human blood pressure came in 1847 when Carl Ludwig inserted a catheter into a patient's artery and hooked the catheter to an invention called the kymograph. The kymograph used a U-shape tube with a quill attached to an ivory float that would sketch changes in pressure on a rotating drum. With further evidence, that blood pressure can record; scientists and doctors began searching for a way to measure blood pressure without inserting tubes and catheters into people.

Noninvasive blood pressure measurement: In 1881, Samuel Karl Ritter von Basch invented the sphygmomanometer, which used a water-filled bag to nullify the arterial pulse. With this device, he recorded the blood's systolic pressure on a thermometer-shaped device. In 1896, Scipione Riva-Rocci improved on this invention with a mercury-filled sphygmomanometer that can measure blood pressure by using an inflatable cuff on the upper arm to constrict the brachial artery.

Sphygmomanometer blood pressure measurement: American neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing saw the new sphygmomanometer at an exhibit in Italy in 1901 and returned to the U.S. with the design. Cushing's use of the device at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston introduced modern blood pressure measurements to the U.S. and helped make them a standard diagnostic test for health checkups, though the negative aspects of high blood pressure still not known.

High blood Pressure Facts

Recent studies show about one in every three adults has high blood pressure, but one-third of the people do not know they have hypertension. Many peoples have high blood pressure for years without their knowledge, because the symptoms of hypertension are common symptoms of other diseases, so it goes unnoticed.

High blood pressure Risks

High pressure increases the chances (or risk) for getting heart disease and/or kidney disease, and for having a stroke.

Uncontrolled hypertension can increase the chance of developing stroke, heart attack, heart failure, or kidney failure. Thus, high blood pressure considers as the "silent killer." The only way to diagnose it is to check the blood pressure.

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