Avalia？？o da acurácia do rastre？metro: um novo equipamento para rastreamento de hipertens？o arterial

background: hypertension is one of the major cardiovascular risk factors affecting more than one billion people. the low awareness of the disease is one of the greatest difficulties related to hypertension. the population screening for hypertension is widely recognized as an effective strategy to detect new cases, but until now, there is no instrument that has become feasible for mass screening of the population. objective: evaluate the accuracy and reproducibility of the rastreometer, a new instrument for the screening of hypertension for community health agents. methods: cross-sectional study with a sample of 436 individuals served by the family health strategy. the evaluation was conducted comparing the results of blood pressure obtained by the oscillometric method and reading of the rastreometer performed by community health agents. results: the rastreometer presented a sensitivity of 81.3% and a specificity of 85.6% when assessed in relation to the values of systolic pressure. the operators’ performance influenced the results of the rastreometer independently (p = 0.0001). the rastreometer showed substantial reproducibility (kendall’s w 0.71). conclusion: the rastreometer, when operated by community health agents, showed good sensitivity, specificity and reproducibility, especially when evaluated with the values of systolic pressure, tending to confirm this new instrument as a method of screening for hypertension in primary health care.