The European Commission, Directorate-General for Health & Consumers has released it’s report :Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR), Mercury Sphygmomanometers in Healthcare and the feasibility of Alternatives, 23 September 2009.

This multinational collaborative study included 17 committee members and an additional 6 External Experts, from 5 E.U. member countries.

Amongst the key conclusions they found:

"It is recommended that mercury sphygmomanometers remain available as a reference standard for clinical validation of existing mercury-free blood-pressure measurement devices. Therefore, the mercury sphygmomanometer should remain available as a reference standard until an alternative device is recognized as such."

"For certain patient groups, blood pressure measurement by a trained observer, using mercury sphygmomanometers or a validated auscultatory alternative, remains the most accurate and reliable form of indirect blood pressure measurement."

"Blood pressure measurement is vital for the prevention and treatment of blood pressure related diseases, and for monitoring of cardiovascular homeostasis. Based on long-term experience, blood pressure measurement using a mercury sphygmomanometer is currently regarded as the gold standard for indirect measurement of blood pressure."

"There are a number of physiological and pathological states that may influence the ability of an oscillometric (automated) device to obtain and equivalent reading to a mercury sphygmomanometer. Oscillometric measurements are dependant on movement, and changes in amplitude of this movement, in the artery, and therefore maybe altered. Oscillometric measurements cannot be relied on it patients with arrhythmias, some valvuar heart disease such as aortic incompetence. Other patients with altered vascular compliance, such as diabetics, or the elderly, could have less accurate blood pressure readings using oscillometric measurement. Changes in vascular compliance may also be confounded by oedema, intravascular volume, hyperdynamic circulation and by changes in cardiac output such as pre-eclampsia, in which oscillometric (automated) readings frequently underestimate the blood pressure."