Pediatric Blood Pressure Calculator

This calculator classifies a child's blood pressure reading against the American Academy of Pediatrics' 2017 Clinical Practice Guideline for pediatric blood pressure screening, using the guideline's own SIMPLIFIED screening table (the compact table AAP published specifically so BP screening could be done without its full continuous, height-Z-adjusted regression tables) for children under 13, and the guideline's fixed adult-aligned numeric cutoffs for adolescents 13 and older. Systolic BP and Diastolic BP are scored completely independently of one another -- Diastolic BP never factors into the Systolic Percentile calculation, and Systolic BP never factors into the Diastolic Percentile calculation. For a child under 13, Classification follows the guideline's own "whichever is lower" rule at each band boundary: Elevated starts at the lower of the age/sex 90th percentile or 120/80 mmHg, Stage 1 starts at the lower of the 95th percentile or 130/80 mmHg, and Stage 2 starts at the lower of the 95th percentile plus 12 mmHg or 140/90 mmHg -- each checked separately for Systolic and Diastolic, with the overall Classification taking the more severe of the two. Percentile itself is a continuous estimate anchored exactly at the guideline's own published 90th- and 95th-percentile values for the child's age and sex (a reading exactly at the age/sex 90th-percentile value always reads back as 90.0, and exactly at the 95th-percentile value as 95.0) -- it is not read from the full continuous AAP tables, which require height-percentile-adjusted regression coefficients this calculator does not have, so treat Percentile as an estimate and Classification as the primary result.

This screening table's own normative sample specifically EXCLUDED children with BMI at or above the 85th percentile (to avoid already-overweight children biasing what counts as a "normal" reading upward) -- this calculator has no BMI input and cannot apply that exclusion, so results for a child with overweight or obesity should be interpreted with that in mind. Beyond age 12, Percentile is held at the age-12 reference anchors as an estimate only, since the guideline itself switches entirely to fixed adult-aligned mmHg thresholds (not percentiles) for ages 13-17 -- for adolescents, rely on Classification, not Percentile. This calculator does not adjust by Height Percentile: the simplified table it implements uses a single conservative (low) height reference by design, unlike the full continuous AAP tables, which do vary by height percentile. A single elevated reading is a screening flag, not a diagnosis -- the guideline itself calls for confirming an abnormal reading on repeat visits before diagnosing hypertension.