Joint limits for systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings

Abstract

In the construction of normal limits for a set of variables allowance must be made for the inter correlation among them. A method of doing this is presented based upon the multivariate normal distribution. It is illustrated for the systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings on a selected group of outpatients. Only those patients were chosen who were found after extensive physical examination and laboratory tests, to be suffering from no major systemic illnesses. The way in which this approach can be utilized in the classification of patients into different disease states is also discussed.