What Is Mean Arterial Pressure (MAP)?
Mean Arterial Pressure (MAP) is the average pressure in your arteries across a full heartbeat cycle — weighted toward diastolic, since your heart spends more time resting between beats than contracting. Clinicians often use it as a single number for how well your organs are being perfused.
What to know about MAP
How it's calculated
MAP ≈ diastolic + ⅓ × (systolic − diastolic). For a 120/80 reading, that's 80 + ⅓ × 40 ≈ 93 mmHg.
Why it's weighted toward diastolic
A resting heartbeat spends roughly twice as long in diastole (relaxed) as systole (contracting), so MAP reflects that time split rather than a simple average of the two numbers.
What's considered typical
A MAP between roughly 70 and 100 mmHg is generally considered adequate for organ perfusion in a healthy adult at rest.
Where it's used clinically
MAP shows up most often in hospital and critical care settings, where maintaining adequate organ perfusion pressure is the priority — less commonly discussed at a routine checkup.
What Is Mean Arterial Pressure (MAP)? — FAQ
Do I need to calculate MAP myself?
No. CardiLog calculates Mean Arterial Pressure automatically for every reading you log, alongside Pulse Pressure.
Is MAP more useful than systolic and diastolic on their own?
Not a replacement — more of an additional data point. Most guideline-based staging still relies on your systolic and diastolic numbers directly.
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