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Brachial-ankle vs carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity as a determinant of cardiovascular structure and function

Journal of Human Hypertension volume 22, pages 24–31 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cf-PWV) is a validated marker of arterial stiffening over the central arteries. Brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (ba-PWV) integrates the mechanical properties from both the central and peripheral arteries and may be more representative than cf-PWV as arterial load for left ventricle (LV). We compared ba-PWV with cf-PWV for the association of cardiovascular structure and function in 320 subjects with various degrees of abnormality in cardiac structure and function. ba-PWV (by oscillometric technique) and cf-PWV (by tonometric technique) were measured simultaneously, and were highly correlated (r=0.79, P<0.001). Both ba-PWV and cf-PWV were significantly correlated with LV mass, but the correlation was better with ba-PWV (r=0.29 vs r=0.22, P=0.0219). While ba-PWV and cf-PWV were similarly significantly correlated with LV end-systolic elastance and mitral E/A ratio, ba-PWV had better correlation with isovolumic relaxation constant (r=0.34 vs r=0.27, P=0.0202) than cf-PWV. In addition, the correlation was also significantly stronger with ba-PWV than with cf-PWV for other indices of arterial stiffness, including carotid incremental modulus (r=0.59 vs 0.50, P=0.0013), effective arterial elastance (r=0.41 vs r=0.33, P=0.0081) and carotid augmentation index (r=0.38 vs r=0.32, P=0.0368). In conclusion, ba-PWV correlates better with LV mass and diastolic function and other indices of arterial function than cf-PWV, probably because ba-PWV encompasses a greater territory of arterial tree than cf-PWV.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by serial grants from the National Science Council (NSC 95–2314-B-010-029), the intramural grants from the Taipei Veterans General Hospital (Grant No. VGH94–203) and grants in aid from the Research Foundation of Cardiovascular Medicine (95–01–004), Taipei, Taiwan, ROC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

    W-C Yu & Y-P Lin

  2. Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

    S-Y Chuang

  3. Medical Research and Education, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

    C-H Chen

  4. Department of Social Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

    C-H Chen

  5. Cardiovascular Research Center, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

    C-H Chen

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  1. W-C Yu
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Correspondence to C-H Chen.

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Yu, WC., Chuang, SY., Lin, YP. et al. Brachial-ankle vs carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity as a determinant of cardiovascular structure and function. J Hum Hypertens 22, 24–31 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.jhh.1002259

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