In addition to being used to measure blood pressure, blood pressure could help limit the damage caused by a heart attack, researchers reveal.
In a study of 250 Danish adults stricken by a heart attack, Canadian researchers used a tensiometer to intermittently block the blood flow to an arm, an intervention that is started when the patient is transported to hospital by ambulance.
This intervention was developed by the Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. It greatly limit the damage to heart muscle when a heart artery is blocked.
The sphygmomanometer is inflated for five minutes, then deflated for five minutes, the sequence is repeated four times. The operation lasts between 35 and 40 minutes.
Once at the hospital, the patient receives a typical treatment for a heart attack, including an angioplasty in which an inflatable balloon is used to open an artery blocked or obstructed.
The study, to be published Friday in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, says that patients who took the blood pressure response with the sustained 30 percent less damage to heart muscle compared to those who have not received this treatment.
The damage was even reduced by 50 per cent among patients who suffered heart attacks the most devastating.
A leading researcher, Dr. Andrew Redington of Sick Kids, said that the idea behind this technique has been circulating for about 25 years.
When tissues are deprived of blood and oxygen intermittently, he said, it seems to prepare for a more prolonged interruption and a protective substance began to circulate in the body. And as the substance spreads throughout the body, it protects all the organs including the heart.
If Dr. Redington was encouraged by these results, it warns that further studies should be conducted even before the intervention becomes common practice.
His team is developing a particular automated blood pressure monitor that would make intervention easier and more efficient for staff health.
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