Why isn’t blood pressure measured in pounds per square inch like every other pressure measurement?
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First off not every other pressure measurement is in PSI. There are many units for pressure (torr, atm, mmHg, Pascal) and we use them all. Atmospheric pressure, for example, is NEVER expressed in PSI. All the units are easily converted between so there is no more hard in using multiple units of pressure than there is in using multiple units for temperature or mass.
For the same reason we don’t measure every distance in ft. Or every weight in tonnes
While uniformity has its place in the world, being overly rigid in applying uniformity causes is own problems. Better to use appropriate systems of measuring and have well established conversions where needed
The medical field is mainly metric.
Drug doses are calculated in cubic centimeters, patient (most of the time) are measured in KG, and CM….
We use Fahrenheit for temperature mainly so people understand it, most medical personnel measure in Celsius.
The metric system is such a norm, (I am a EMT) when someone (CNA I think) gave me a patients temperature in Fahrenheit, they lost all credibility in my eyes.
I think OP is asking why is blood pressure measured in “distance of liquid” rather than “force / area” like every other pressure measurement. While I know the reason, I’m not sure I can explain it properly.
It’s expressed in millimetres of mercury (mmHg) because the first popular device for measuring blood pressure, the mercury sphygmomanometer, measured the pressure by moving mercury.
as others said, it uses same units as the first doctors used.
medical field does changed without a good reason. Everybody is trained to understand same units, including some very young and very old healthcare workers. All medical equipment uses the same scale.
Switching to different units does not provide any advantage (it is all simple rescaling), but will cost a lot to replace equipment, it will take time to retrain workers, and people will be making mistakes: recall the young and the old, and consider the stress of the situations they have to deal with.
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