Stroke remains one of the leading causes of death and long-term disability worldwide, affecting more than 795,000 people annually in the United States alone. The alarming rates of stroke aren’t surprising, given that hypertension – one of the most important risk factors for stroke – often remains undetected, undertreated, or misclassified. Improving the diagnosis and treatment of high blood pressure could save lives and prevent thousands of cases of serious long-term disability.
When a patient has known health risks for a stroke, physicians often recommend improving modifiable risk factors of stroke, like a healthy diet, exercise and smoking cessation. However, genetic predisposition accounts for a significant percentage of an individual’s overall stroke risk. And while it’s true that you can’t outrun your genes, you can treat hypertension – the most common inherited condition that puts people at a higher risk for stroke.
Hypertension remains the leading modifiable cause of stroke
The relationship between hypertension and stroke is well established. Over time, elevated blood pressure damages blood vessels, making arteries narrow, stiff and weak. This vascular damage increases the likelihood of both ischemic stroke, as thrombosis might happen, or hemorrhagic stroke, as arteries might rupture and cause massive bleeding inside the skull, even without any trauma. This makes hypertension one of the most important modifiable risk factors for a stroke over time.
Chronically elevated blood pressure accelerates vascular injury and significantly increases the risk of stroke. It’s well established that nighttime blood pressure patterns in particular better predict stroke than daytime blood pressure.
The challenge: Significant data gap
Physicians know the importance of treating hypertension, however the challenge is accurately diagnosing it in the first place. Most doctors have limited access to 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (ABPM) monitors that can measure patients’ dynamic blood pressure. Even leading academic medical centers typically have only a few ABPM cuffs to offer patients.
Despite knowing ABPM is considered the gold standard for diagnosing hypertension, physicians are often left to rely on single-office blood pressure readings that don’t capture daily activities, sleep, physical activity, stress, medication timing and countless other physiologic factors.
Traditional office measurements create several well-known challenges:
- Undetected masked hypertension
- Overlooked blood pressure variability is missed
- Unassessed nighttime blood pressure patterns
- Unevaluated medication effectiveness
- Overtreatment due to white coat hypertension
The gap in easily accessible patient data makes it difficult for physicians to diagnose and treat hypertension – leaving more patients at risk for stroke.
24-hour cuff ABPM still presents challenges
Even for the rare U.S. patients who do undergo 24-hour ABPM screening, the results can pose challenges. A patient may appear controlled during traditional cuff readings, but elevated nighttime blood pressure and non-dipping blood pressure patterns may not be detected because the device is so uncomfortable at night. Patients often remove the cuff. Without continuous monitoring, those patterns remain invisible, undetected and untreated.
Even throughout the day’s measurements, many patients stop walking, talking or engaging in normal activities when they anticipate a cuff inflation cycle. Plus, pressure and discomfort from the device itself raise blood pressure readings.
How Biobeat is transforming hypertension diagnosis
By eliminating many of the barriers that have historically limited ABPM adoption, Biobeat offers a new approach to helping patients access the treatment they need to control their blood pressure and lower their risk of a stroke.
The FDA-cleared wearable platform enables continuous, cuffless, non-invasive blood pressure monitoring via a lightweight, chest-worn patch worn for 24 hours during normal daily activities.
Unlike traditional ABPM systems, Biobeat’s solution:
- Eliminates the need for uncomfortable traditional cuffs
- Captures blood pressure every 15 minutes throughout the 24 hours
- Improves patient comfort and compliance
- Provides daytime and nighttime blood pressure
- Measures dipping status and nocturnal patterns
- Simplifies clinic workflows
- Delivers comprehensive reports through a web-based platform
The result is a more scalable approach to obtaining the blood pressure data physicians need to confidently and accurately diagnose and even manage hypertension once people begin medication.
Biobeat’s cuffless blood pressure device enables more personalized treatment decisions while giving physicians a clearer picture of how blood pressure behaves in the real world, not just in the exam room.
The future of stroke prevention starts with better blood pressure data
As hypertension continues to be a leading modifiable cause of strokes, millions of Americans can reduce their risk of having a life-threatening cardiovascular event. Diagnosing and effectively monitoring high blood pressure using scalable, 24-hour, cuffless ambulatory blood pressure data is now possible.
Biobeat’s cuffless device and platform represent an important step toward closing the diagnostic gap. By delivering continuous, comfortable and clinically validated blood pressure monitoring, clinicians can gain deeper insights into patient risk, improve hypertension management and potentially intervene before a stroke occurs.
Schedule a Biobeat demonstration and explore how continuous ambulatory monitoring can help identify risk earlier, improve patient compliance and support better cardiovascular outcomes.
To schedule a demo of how Biobeat works or to learn more about how Biobeat’s cuffless Blood Pressure monitors can help improve HTN diagnostics and treatment, contact: info@bio-beat.com.