K5 = Diastolic Pressure
1 University of Tennessee Memphis, TN 38105
2 Children's Hospital of New Jersey Newark, NJ
3 CAS Medical Systems Inc Branford, CT
The Report of the Second Task Force on Blood Pressure Control in Children19871 has served as the "reference standard" for normal blood pressure (BP) on children from age 3 through 18. The authors recommended that for children from 3 to 12 years old the 4th Korotkoff sound (K4) be utilized to determine diastolic BP. In reviewing that document, we find that this was chosen not because of a well-demonstrated correlation of K4 with measured diastolic BP, but because KS values were not always obtained in the databases from which the final analyses were performed.




