 He was buried in the small cemetery of San Michele di Pagana.Riva Rocci's major contribution to medicine was the invention of an easy-to-use version of the mercury sphygmomanometer which measured brachial blood pressure.The key element of this design was the use of a cuff that encircled the arm - previous designs had used rubber bulbs filled with water or air to manually compress the artery or other technically difficult methods to measure pressure.