As the quality control and assurance project for the blood pressure measurement in the Korean National Health And Nutrition Survey (KNHANES), we performed recruitment, education, training, and finally accreditation process as established by the previo...
As the quality control and assurance project for the blood pressure measurement in the Korean National Health And Nutrition Survey (KNHANES), we performed recruitment, education, training, and finally accreditation process as established by the previous projects. And we also performed quality control for the measurement environment which is challenging for the mobile unit introduced since 2007. We monitored for the background noise and temperature. Through field visit and video monitoring, we assured the quality of the measurements and we regularly standardized the observer 3 times during the study period. Validation of the automated device for blood pressure measurement and methods is important to minimize errors in measured values. For pediatric subject, another filed validation study was completed by recruiting 104 subjects. We measured 9 time blood pressure, i.e., 3 times per each methods in random orders. As the results, automated device showed greater variance in the errors than manual method. Moreover, diastolic blood pressure tends to be measured as still lower readings. Advisory meetings revealed that it seems to be safer to choose manual method using non-mercury manometers to protect the stability of the management parameters of blood pressure in time series than automated oscillometric methods in the subjects with pediatric ages. Impending mercury ban forced the decision between automated and manual methods. Despite some convenience of automated device, final decision should be prudent through official meeting with domestic and foreign specialists.