Upon measuring the blood pressure with a catheter inserted into the blood vessel, the observed value may include various types of measurment errors.
These errors are : (1) an error due to the resonance phenomenon relating to the fluid inertia within the catheter and the compliance of the pressure gage membrane, and (2) an error due to the reflection of the blood pressure in front of the catheter, the change of the blood pressure wave form and change of the blood flow form, and the attenuation of the pressure wave.
In this paper, the second subject is investigated theoretically and experimentally. At first, the relation between the blood flow and the blood pressure wave are obtained from the Navier-Stokes equation, the equation of motion for the elastic tube wall, and the equation of the continuity.
With the use of the pressure-voltage (or flow-current) analog, the change of the blood pressure at the exit of the heart, at the front and the end of the catheter, and the change of the reflection in front of the catheter and the change of the attenuation are calculated and observed.
Hence the heart is considered as a constant current source, and the large blood vessel a constant voltage source.
From these results, the value of the errors is thought to be mainly due to the reflection in front of the catheter and to be fairly large in size.
They show different values depending on the radii of the blood vessel and of the catheter, on the length of the inserted catheter, on the distance from the heart or the large blood vessel to the inserted catheter and on the frequency.
The blood pressure becomes sometimes larger than two times of the original blood pressure for these effects.
For the attenuation, we will have to take care of it, when the catheter is inserted into the small blood vessel, but will not do as the large blood vessel.
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