[gaetgu]

I'm sorry—30 mmHg?

Maybe I am misunderstanding, or there is something wrong with my own knowledge, but "30 mmHg" added to systolic seems extremely high.

I am currently an EMT-B student here in the United States, and taking vital signs like blood pressure is our bread and butter. We practice it several times a week, on different people with different body types and different blood pressure baselines. Anything more than ±4 mmHg in a manual reading is terrible accuracy, and anything like +30 mmHg probably comes from someone who doesn't know how to use the equipment.

But again, maybe there is something I am missing. If there is I'd love to be educated and hear about it!

[sph]

It's not high if you don't know how to measure your blood pressure. Your BP increases a lot if you're moving around, and not properly rested.

When you're at the GP's office, you might have been rushing to get there, you do a minute of small talk and then they strap on a cuff and tell you "oh my, it's very high", this is the reason. And it happens so often it even has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_coat_hypertension

I have seen dozen of times, because of effort, anxiety, whatever, my BP being 160/110, which drops to 130/85 after 15+ minutes of complete relaxation. Many amateurs (which apparently includes most GPs) simply do not let the BP settle. The medical value of tracking BP is to know its baseline at rest, otherwise it's a meaningless number.