Eli5: how does the blood pressure cuff determine your blood pressure so accurately?
In: 200
As simple as I can phrase it:
It can sense 2 things: your blood flow and the pressure it’s applying to your arm. If the pressure it applies is higher than your systolic or diastolic blood pressure it cuts blood flow.
So it applies a very high pressure and starts to slowly decrease it. Once it senses the first blood flow (systolic) it knows that your systolic pressure is what it’s measuring at that time. It then keeps lowering the pressure until it can sense your diastolic blood flow.
The old school method is just a doctor checking the pressure value while listening to your bloodflow with a stethoscope.
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