A Study on the Recording Apparatus for the Brachial Pulse Wave

Abstract

During the measurement of blood pressure we can see the pulsation of the column of mercury, synchronizing with Korotokoff sound. The pulsation reflects the change of pressure in the cuff which is recorded by a newly developed method. We named it "Brachial Pulse Wave (BPW)".We used a high fidelity transducer of displacement type and cut off signals below 5Hz by 6db/oct filter.This new method gives us the records of blood pressure and BPW simultaneously by a single procedure of blood pressure measurement.According to the results of our surveillance on 2,628 persons, BPW had the correlation coefficient of 0.87 with age, 0.52 with systolic blood pressure and 0.40 with diastolic. It seems to reflect the sclerotic change of arteries by aging. BPW is well correlated with the pulse wave velocity, one of the most useful method to detect arteriosclerosis.Owing to the simplicity, promptness and reliability BPW recording seems to be one of the useful screening methods for the circulatory disorders.