Scipione Riva-Rocci

Scipione Riva - Rocci ( born August 7, 1863 in Almese, † March 15, 1937 in Rapallo ) was an Italian physician and the first to describe the eponymous type of blood pressure measurement.

Education and work

In 1888 he completed his academic education at the University of Turin in internal medicine and surgery. He then worked as an assistant at the Propaedeutic Medical Clinic in Turin by Carlo Forlanini (1840-1918), considered the inventor of the technique of artificial pneumothorax for the treatment of Pulmonaltuberkulose. There Riva - Rocci took on its first experiments on the technique of artificial pneumothorax in part, examined with Antonini the respiratory function under stress and altitude conditions and together with Cavallero the respiratory function of patients with decreased pulmonary resorption.

1894 Riva Rocci habilitated for the specific pathology of internal medicine and in 1898 he followed Forlanini at the University of Pavia ( Ospedale San Matteo ). In 1900 he took over the management of the City Hospital in Varese as director and chief physician for the next 28 years. 1908 to 1921 he taught as a lecturer of pediatrics ( Habilitation 1907) at the Pediatric Clinic of the University of Pavia.

Performance

Riva - Roccis most significant achievement is the first description of a pneumatic cuff for a mercury sphygmomanometer (1896 ) that the soft tissues and arteries of the upper arm evenly compressed and thus allowed easy indirect measurement of systolic blood pressure.

The 1896 presented at the Italian Congress of Internal Medicine, indirect, bloodless and easy to use method for blood pressure determination quickly developed to the standard technique of medical diagnosis and facilitated the treatment of hypertension. The core of the measurement is an upper arm cuff which allowed a uniform circular compression. At the same time, the doctor can feel comfortable with fumbling fingers, the pulsations of the artery at the wrist. Riva Rocci recognized the middle of the upper arm as the most suitable site for the compression and simplified the apparatus by a rigid cylinder instead of a rubber tube ( a piece of bicycle rubber tube ) is used, which is inflated wrapped around the arm. The expansion of the inflated tube is limited by a circular leather sheet. In addition to the mercury manometer, a rubber bulb to inflate the cuff is needed beyond the patient for proper measurement must expose the upper arm. Measured with the cuff on the upper arm and keys of the pulse " according to Riva- Rocci " blood pressure is abbreviated as " RR " ( Riva Rocci ).

Riva - Roccis procedure was significantly supplemented in 1905 by the Russian physician Nikolai Sergeyevich Korotkov: describing the use of the stethoscope, with the eponymous Korotkoff sounds are monitored at decompression of the cuff. The Korotkoff sounds mark the systolic and diastolic blood pressure, which can then be assigned to a reading on the manometer scale. The proposed by Heinrich von Recklinghausen minimum width of the cuff on the upper arm (10-14 cm ) the accuracy of the method was further improved. Without mercury could also be measured oscillometric first time.

An important role for the dissemination of new blood pressure measuring method played the American neurosurgeon Harvey Williams Cushing (1869-1939), the Riva - Rocci on May 6, 1901 had visited in Pavia in order to become familiar with the technique of blood pressure measurement in place. He improved the unit, and from 1910 used the majority of American doctors similar appliances.

Riva Rocci also emerged as a translator important medical works of contemporary standard and published in many areas of general and special pathology.

Units of the pressure values

To date, the arterial blood pressure by default in millimeters of mercury (mmHg ) is specified instead of the SI unit Pascal.

Works

• Un nuovo sfigmomanometro. Gazz Med Torino 47 (1896) 981 1001