The Effect of Intermittent versus Continuous Non-Invasive Blood Pressure Monitoring on the Detection of Intraoperative Hypotension, a Sub-Study

Intraoperative hypotension is associated with postoperative complications. However, in the majority of surgical patients, blood pressure (BP) is measured intermittently with a non-invasive cuff around the upper arm (NIBP-arm). We hypothesized that NIBP-arm, compared with a non-invasive continuous alternative, would result in missed events and in delayed recognition of hypotensive events. This was a sub-study of a previously published cohort study in adult patients undergoing surgery. The detection of hypotension (mean arterial pressure below 65 mmHg) was compared using two non-invasive methods; intermittent oscillometric NIBP-arm versus continuous NIBP measured with a finger cuff (cNIBP-finger) (Nexfin, Edwards Lifesciences). cNIBP-finger was used as the reference standard. Out of 350 patients, 268 patients (77%) had one or more hypotensive events during surgery. Out of the 286 patients, 72 (27%) had one or more missed hypotensive events. The majority of hypotensive events (92%) were detected with NIBP-arm, but were recognized at a median of 1.2 (0.6–2.2) minutes later. Intermittent BP monitoring resulted in missed hypotensive events and the hypotensive events that were detected were recognized with a delay. This study highlights the advantage of continuous monitoring. Future studies are needed to understand the effect on patient outcomes.