Wednesday, April 04, 2007

What is arterial blood pressure? Meaning of arterial blood pressure

Blood pressure is the term that is used to indicate the force exerted by circulating blood on the walls of the blood vessels inside our bodies, and constitutes one of the principal vital signs.

Blood Pressure, or BP, that is the pressure of the circulating blood decreases as blood moves through arteries, arterioles, capillaries, and veins.

The most important thing for everyone to understand is the fact that the term blood pressure generally refers to arterial blood pressure, i.e., the pressure in the larger arteries.

Blood pressure is very commonly measured via a sphygmomanometer, which uses the height of a column of mercury to reflect the circulating pressure (see Non-invasive measurement).

Most of the latest blood pressure measuring devices do not use mercury.

But even then, the Blood pressure values are still universally reported in millimetres of mercury (mmHg).

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