Checking Your Blood Pressure Could Kill You

At least it begs answers to the question.

While sitting in our family physician’s examination room I watched as the nurse dutifully took my son’s temperature, pulse, respiration and finally blood pressure.

Of all the things used in a medical examination, that is the one thing that every patient who walks through the door shares. A blood pressure cuff. Has anyone ever seen one of those cleaned or disinfected?

Neither has my Doctor. Tongue Depressors, the paper on the examine table and pillow are changed after every patient. Even those little black cups he puts on the flashlight to see in your eyes, nose, ears and throats. Nothing is shared that another patient has touched. Nothing except the blood pressure cuff. It matters not if you are there for tuberculosis, aids or strep throat. The cuff has touched them all. And now you.

I wonder how many cases of pneumonia were given to people in a weakened state while in the hospital. How many would have lived if some measure of protection were used. A simple paper barrier may have saved a life.

I can’t say for sure that there is even a need for concern, let alone whether it was the cause of any death or even illness. But logic tells me there should be some concern. A person with a high fever comes to his or her doctor and the nurse does her duty. She puts a condom on the thermometer and sticks it under your tongue. Pulls it out and discards the condom. Takes your pulse and respiration. Then your blood pressure. Then she sanitizes her hands or washes them. Why does the nurse do that? Because touching you may have contacted bacteria or viral components in your sweat or on your skin. Oops! Times up, there is another patient waiting to receive your illness just outside. If you hurry and get out the next patient can get the bacterial and viral cocktail of the last three patients who spent their seven and a half minutes in that office.

How many of you cough into the crux of your elbow? The same elbow that the nurse is placing the stethoscope on to take your blood pressure. The fact that the nurse and the doctor wash after they touch you should tell you that there is a chance of cross contagion.

Maybe the cuff is made of some miracle material that bacteria dies from as soon as they are touched by it. But somehow I doubt it.

My Doctor says no one has done a study. Why not? Why is it necessary to change the paper on my exam table but you can put that cuff on me that has touched the skin of many sick people?

As I said in the opening. It is a question that begs an answer. And a disinfectant.