A new study from the University of Missouri shows that the way blood pressure information is presented to doctors can have a big impact on how they understand a patient’s health.
The research, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, highlights that using a new type of graph could help doctors make better, faster decisions about blood pressure management.
Blood pressure naturally goes up and down throughout the day. Because of this, it can sometimes be hard for doctors to tell if a patient’s blood pressure is truly under control.
One common problem is “white coat hypertension,” where a patient’s blood pressure is high at the doctor’s office but normal when they are at home.
Victoria Shaffer, a psychology professor at the University of Missouri and the study’s lead author, explained that 10% to 20% of people diagnosed with high blood pressure might actually have normal levels most of the time—they just get nervous at the doctor’s office.
To study how graphs influence doctors’ judgments, Shaffer and her team showed 57 doctors blood pressure data for a made-up patient. They used two different graphs.
One graph showed the raw numbers, meaning it had lots of ups and downs, peaks and valleys. The other graph was a new tool the researchers developed—a “smoothed” graph. This smoothed graph averaged out the ups and downs to show a clearer overall picture.
The results were striking. When the patient’s blood pressure was generally under control but had lots of small fluctuations, doctors were much more likely to correctly judge the patient’s health when they looked at the smoothed graph instead of the raw one.
Shaffer explained that raw graphs can be “visually noisy,” making it easy to focus too much on extreme spikes or drops. These outliers can mislead even experienced doctors into thinking a patient’s blood pressure is worse than it really is.
Shaffer believes that simple visual tools like the smoothed graph could make it easier for busy doctors to quickly and accurately assess whether a patient’s blood pressure is under control. This is important because it could reduce unnecessary treatments.
Some patients are being over-treated with blood pressure medicines they don’t need, which can cause side effects like dizziness and slow heart rates. This is especially dangerous for older adults, who are already at higher risk of falling.
The smoothed graph is still in the early stages of research. Shaffer’s team, along with partners from Vanderbilt University and Oregon Health & Science University, are working on ways to make it available to patients and doctors through secure electronic health record systems.
This could allow patients who monitor their blood pressure at home to share better, easier-to-read information with their doctors, possibly reducing the need for as many in-person visits.
Shaffer wasn’t surprised by the results. As a psychologist, she knows that humans are naturally drawn to extreme cases and threats. Even trained professionals like doctors are not immune to these instincts. This means that better-designed graphs and visuals could help both patients and healthcare providers focus on what really matters.
As technology like smartwatches and health apps becomes more common, we are gathering more health data than ever before. Shaffer emphasized that the real challenge now is not collecting the data, but finding better ways to present it.
With smarter visualization tools like the smoothed graph, patients and doctors could make better use of all this information without feeling overwhelmed, leading to better health outcomes.
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The research findings can be found in Journal of General Internal Medicine.
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