A Study of Assessment of Vascular Aging by Locality of the Radial Pressure Pulse Waveform

Abstract

Noninvasive pulse wave analysis is useful for evaluation of vascular load and vascular aging. The radial pulse waveforms provide more precise information concerning blood pressure changes than systolic and diastolic pressures only. For this purpose, we performed drug administration studies (study 1) and epidemiological studies (study 2) to evaluate the possibility of clinical application of the ΔBP_p of the radial pulse waveform. We call this is “Locality of the waveform”. In the study 1, radial pressure pulse was measured with the noninvasive stroke volume for 6 adults with normal physical findings. The ΔBP_p was defined as the amplitude from the systolic peak to that of the dicrotic notch in the pulse waveform. Although radial pressure decrease is only from 118/69 to 117/60 after 20mg sublingual nifedipine, the ΔBP_p increase from 31 mmHg to 43 mmHg. From this fact, the ΔBP_p may be useful for noninvasive evaluation of the effects of vasoactive agents. In the study 2, The ΔBP_p was measured in 80 adults with normal physical findings. The ΔBP_p showed the tendency of decreasing with age. The ΔBP_p (y) decreased with age (x) (r=-0.41, P<0.001, y=-0.62 x+48.8) as aging index.