title: Korotkoff sounds -- the improbable also occurs.
abstract: Very few discoveries have had such a large impact on and relevance to clinical medicine as the noninvasive measurement of the diastolic blood pressure. A number of gifted physiologists and clinicians were ineffectively in search of a noninvasive method to determine the diastolic pressure. Nonetheless, the quantification of the diastolic BP was not achieved by any of these clinical or physiological researchers, but by an unlikely and unexpected figure: Nikolai Sergeevich Korotkoff (1874-1920), a young Russian army surgeon, working under precarious conditions in the hardship of diverse wars. It is easy to dismiss the achievement of Korotkoff as a serendipitous discovery, similar to that of Alexander Fleming in the discovery of penicillin. However, Nassim N. Taleb's recent black swan theory may serve to illustrate his discovery in a new and, perhaps, surprising way.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Estañol
authors.forename: Guillermo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Delgado
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Borgstein
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001794:Blood Pressure; D001795:Blood Pressure Determination / Q000266:history* / Q000379:methods; D003971:Diastole / Q000502:physiology; D004285:Dogs; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D033162:Incidental Findings; D019722:Sphygmomanometers / Q000266:history