Erratic blood pressure coupled with palpitations??

[Jamiesl1986]

I've been told to keep track of my own blood pressure at home so I went ahead and bought myself the top of the line omron blood pressure cuff(very expensive). I take my blood pressure 4 times a day. One as soon as I wake up, the second when I feel a crash during the day, the third when I'm about to go to bed, and the 4th is taken when I feel symptomatic. I've noticed that when I'm feeling fine without any palpitations, my blood pressure is pretty stable. My readings are usually 110/75-130/80. However, when I'm feeling palpitations, I take my blood pressure and it's completely unstable. I take my blood pressure 6 consecutive times and get readings such as follows 100/38, 133/42, 183/162, 90/49, 200/123. These numbers are very concerning to me.I also take my blood pressure when i feel normal the same way(6 consecutive times), and it remains stable. These erratic readings during the palpitations always happen. I also suffer from other odd symptoms, but the cardiologist can't really say whats wrong. He tells me my heart seems fine. i haven't told him about the blood pressure yet, but have made an appointment with him at the end of the month. Any of you guys have any advice or insight as to what might be going on?

[Jamiesl1986]

Thank you for that information. You're response brought me some relief.

[cardiobill]

Hi, palpiations or any irregular heart rhythm really can mess with the at home monitors. Has to do with how they calculate the pressure with the oscillometric technology.
And having used Omron, its the most common in a clinic. I stopped using it the first day as the blood pressures were clearly measuring high.

They are a mixed bag of sorts and I correlate them versus a mercury manometer which is the gold standard and about 4/5 times they do the job. Usually the bad readings are patients that have larger arms than the cuff size was meant for. I think they make them for 80 year old women who weigh 100 pounds and 12 inch arms.
A big guy with any muscle the Omron has the tendency to read too high.

So in my experience, if it only reads wrong with palpitations, it would make sense that the Omron is just having a problem reading the correct beats of normal sinus rhythm or the much more forceful heart contraction and vlood pulsation following a PVC. That can throw off nurses or medical assistants who dont take into account thsi anomaly. These same professionals incidentally may also use the wrong size cfuff but thats another story.

My advice is to ignore the blood pressure readings taking while you are having palpitations or if you are have someone take it and test it against a mercury manometer at the same time if possible to compare.

Your bp readings are within normal and what you are describing is a known fault in automatic cuff monitors and my experience with Omron as its the number one bp machine out there, that they have the same problems