In medical terms, RR most commonly stands for respiratory rate, the number of breaths a person takes per minute. It’s one of the core vital signs recorded at virtually every clinical visit, alongside heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature. However, RR can also refer to relative risk in medical research, or historically to the Riva-Rocci method of measuring blood pressure. The meaning depends entirely on context.
Respiratory Rate: The Most Common Meaning
When you see RR on a hospital monitor, nursing chart, or vital signs summary, it almost always means respiratory rate. A normal resting respiratory rate for healthy adults falls between 12 and 20 breaths per minute. Adults over 50 have a slightly narrower normal range of 13 to 20 breaths per minute.
Children and infants breathe significantly faster. Newborns up to 3 months old take 30 to 60 breaths per minute, which can seem alarmingly fast if you’re not expecting it. That range gradually decreases with age:
- 3 to 11 months: 25 to 60 breaths per minute
- 1 to 3 years: 20 to 40 breaths per minute
- 3 to 6 years: 20 to 40 breaths per minute
- 6 to 12 years: 14 to 30 breaths per minute
- 13 years and older: 12 to 20 breaths per minute
A breathing rate consistently above the normal range is called tachypnea, which means quick, shallow breathing. A rate below normal is called bradypnea. Both can signal underlying problems, from infections and fever (which speed breathing up) to medication effects or neurological conditions (which can slow it down).
How Respiratory Rate Is Measured
Measuring RR is straightforward. You count the number of times the chest or abdomen rises over the course of one full minute while sitting at rest. The key is being relaxed, since anxiety, physical activity, or even awareness of being watched can change your breathing pattern. In clinical settings, nurses often count respirations while appearing to take a pulse, specifically so the patient doesn’t consciously alter their breathing.
If you want to check your own respiratory rate at home, sit in a chair, relax for a few minutes, then count each breath (one inhale plus one exhale equals one breath) for 60 seconds. A number consistently outside the 12 to 20 range at rest is worth mentioning to your doctor.
Relative Risk in Medical Research
In research papers and clinical studies, RR often stands for relative risk. This is a statistic that compares how likely an event (such as developing a disease) is in one group versus another. It’s calculated by dividing the risk in the exposed group by the risk in the control group.
The number is simple to interpret. An RR of 1.00 means both groups have the same risk. An RR greater than 1.00 means the exposed group faces higher risk. An RR less than 1.00 means the exposed group has lower risk. So if a study reports that smoking has an RR of 10 for lung cancer, it means smokers in that study were 10 times more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers.
You might also see a related term, the odds ratio (OR), which is calculated differently but conveys a similar idea. The practical difference: cohort studies, which follow groups of people forward in time, produce relative risk. Case-control studies, which start with people who already have a condition and look backward, produce odds ratios. When a condition is rare, the two numbers are nearly identical. When a condition is common, they can diverge, and the odds ratio tends to exaggerate the apparent size of the effect compared to relative risk.
The Riva-Rocci Blood Pressure Notation
In some European medical records, particularly older ones, you may see blood pressure written as “RR 120/80” instead of “BP 120/80.” This refers to Scipione Riva-Rocci, the Italian physician who introduced the upper arm cuff for measuring blood pressure in 1896. His method involved inflating a cuff around the upper arm and feeling for the pulse at the wrist to determine systolic pressure (the top number).
Nine years later, a Russian physician named Nikolai Korotkoff added the technique of listening for sounds over the artery with a stethoscope, which made it possible to measure both the top and bottom numbers. This combined approach, sometimes abbreviated RRK (Riva-Rocci/Korotkoff), became the standard method of blood pressure measurement worldwide. The “RR” notation for blood pressure persists in parts of Europe and Latin America, so if you encounter it on a foreign medical document, it simply means blood pressure.
How to Tell Which Meaning Applies
Context makes it clear in most cases. On a bedside monitor or vital signs chart, RR is respiratory rate, typically displayed alongside HR (heart rate) and BP (blood pressure). In a research paper discussing risk factors, RR means relative risk and will usually appear with a number like RR = 1.5 and a confidence interval. On a European medical record next to a number like 130/85, it refers to blood pressure via the Riva-Rocci convention.
If you’re reading your own medical records and aren’t sure what an abbreviation means, the surrounding numbers are your best clue. A value between roughly 10 and 25 next to “RR” on a vital signs sheet is breaths per minute. A value like 120/80 is blood pressure.