Clinical trial of an ergometry bicycle with automatic blood pressure registration

: Automatic blood-pressure registration on a computerized ergometer cycle was compared with simultaneous manually registered blood-pressure employing a standard mercury sphygmomanometer during performance of maximal ergometer exercise testing on 50 consecutive patients. The difference in blood-pressure registered by the automatic and the manual methods, respectively, was, on an average +0.2 mmHg with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 20 mmHg. By means of linear regression analysis, a correlation coefficient of 0.97 (p less than 0.001) with an uncertainty of approximately 6% with automatic blood-pressure registration was found. Simultaneously, the uncertainty was independent of the degree of work performed. The apparatus was found to be of practical clinical use.