Procedure for Manual Blood Pressure Reading
To measure your blood pressure, a cuff is placed around your upper arm and inflated. The person measuring your blood pressure will listen with a stethoscope for the sound of blood in the artery while releasing air from the cuff. The first sound heard is the systolic pressure, followed by the sound of the diastolic pressure. Your blood pressure is then written as a ratio of the pressure number of the first sound to the number of the second. For example, if the first sound was heard when the dial was on 124, and the last sound was heard when the dial was at 76, you would write your blood pressure as 124/76. You would say, "My blood pressure was 124 over 76."