Lightfoot, JT. Can blood pressure be measured during exercise?: A review . Sports Medicine 12: 290-301, 1991
NOTE: The below abstract was not published with the referenced article because it is not the custom of Sports Medicine to publish abstracts with their reviews.
A common and widely accepted measurement, the auscultatory determination of blood pressure during exercise is used as an indicator of various pathological conditions by many physicians and exercise technicians. While widely accepted, movement, increases in ambient noise, and aural limitations can conspire with other confounding factors to make auscultation during exercise difficult. The purpose of this review is to examine the literature to determine whether there is a theoretical and experimental basis for the commonly held belief that the use of auscultation during exercise for blood pressure determinations is valid. Intra-arterial and auscultatory methods of determining blood pressure and the studies that have compared these techniques during exercise are reviewed. It is obvious from these studies that auscultatory diastolic pressure, regardless of whether phase IV or phase V Korotkoff sounds are used, bears no relationship to centrally measured blood pressure during exercise. Additionally, the literature is equivocal on whether auscultation can estimate systolic pressures either accurately or reliably during exercise. Therefore, while exercise technicians will probably continue to use auscultation to determine blood pressure during exercise, it must be remembered that the numerous inherent errors associated with auscultation combined with the errors induced by exercise, result in blood pressure measurements of dubious accuracy and reliability.
KEY WORDS: Systolic blood pressure; Diastolic blood pressure; Auscultation; Indirect Methods; Direct methods; Exercise;