Blood Pressure Monitoring

Cardiovascular Disease

According to NHS England NHS England CVD  "Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the second most common cause of premature death in England, after cancer, affecting seven million people. One in four premature deaths are caused by CVD, and 1.6 million disability adjusted life years can be attributed to it".

High blood pressure significantly increases the risk of having a heart attack or stroke, but early detection and treatment can help people live longer, healthier lives. The NHS Long Term Plan focuses on tackling health inequalities and the prevention of ill health and aims to prevent 150,000 strokes and heart attacks as a result of CVD, over the next ten years.

High blood pressure and CVD

The NHS service is based on published research, previous pilots and NICE Guidance for high blood pressure, which includes using ambulatory measurement to confirm a diagnosis of hypertension. It suggests that people aged over 40 years should be considered for treatment of hypertension if they have a confirmed high blood pressure reading following ambulatory monitoring and taking certain risk factors into account.

Within England the NHSE Hypertension Case Finding Service enables community pharmacy to opportunistically measure the blood pressure of consenting eligible adults who come into the pharmacy or referred by their GP. 

There is also some very useful information explaining how to set up a private BP monitoring service on Numarknet. The resorce download can be found at Numark Blood Pressure Service and is called Blood pressure measuring service SOP v5.0. There are also useful free downloadable resources to simplify running the service here.

Products can also be bought on Numarknet for link selling to the patient e.g. a Numark Electronic Blood Pressure Monitor (6792543) blood pressure monitor which can be found at the following link Numark BP Machine