Finger-cuff and oscillometric versus intra-arterial blood pressure measurements: a prospective method comparison study in patients having noncardiac surgery.

Authors

Alina Bergholz, Marie Wohlert, Linda Krause, Kristen K Thomsen, Moritz Flick, Rami Saad, Mirja Wegge, Philipp Breitfeld, Karim Kouz, Bernd Saugel

Published in

British journal of anaesthesia. Jul 20, 2026. Epub Jul 20, 2026.

Abstract

Arterial blood pressure monitoring is mandatory in all patients having surgery. Intra-arterial blood pressure monitoring is the gold standard but is invasive and associated with complications. In most surgical patients, blood pressure therefore is monitored with intermittent upper-arm cuff oscillometry. Finger-cuff systems allow noninvasive continuous blood pressure monitoring, but their performance remains insufficiently studied. We therefore aimed to simultaneously compare finger-cuff and oscillometric with intra-arterial blood pressure measurements in patients having low- to moderate-risk noncardiac surgery.
In this single-centre prospective method comparison study, we simultaneously measured finger-cuff (test method), oscillometric (test method), and intra-arterial (reference method) blood pressures in patients ≥18 yr old having elective low- to moderate-risk noncardiac surgery with general anaesthesia at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany. We quantified the agreement using Bland-Altman analyses.
In total, 76 patients with 2577 triplets of blood pressure measurements were analysed. For mean blood pressure, the mean difference ± standard deviation of the differences (95% limits of agreement) was -2.8 ± 6.9 (-16.3 to 10.7) mm Hg between finger-cuff and intra-arterial measurements and 2.1 ± 8.9 (-15.3 to 19.5) mm Hg between oscillometric and intra-arterial measurements.
In patients having low- to moderate-risk noncardiac surgery, the agreement between finger-cuff and intra-arterial blood pressure measurements was comparable with the agreement between oscillometric and intra-arterial blood pressure measurements.
NCT06602089.

PMID:
42476889
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 21 Jul 2026.

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