Artery Research

Objective: To compare measurements of carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) using two cuff-based devices (Vicorder and XCEL), with a widely-used tonometric method (SphygmoCor). Methods: Comparative measurements of PWV were made using the SphygmoCor, XCEL and Vicorder devices in 91 individuals (mean±SD...

Renovascular hypertension is an uncommon cause of secondary hypertension. Percutaneous angioplasty is considered in selected patients. Retrospective study of patients undergoing renal artery revascularization, in a tertiary centre, in 2004–2017. Demographic, biometrical, radiological and clinical data...

Background: Non-invasive measurement of Central Blood Pressure (CBP) in the clinic setting is the advantage of the validated, tonometer-based SphygmoCor device. Recently, a novel brachial cuff-based SphygmoCor device (XCEL) has been tested and validated against the tonometer-based method of CBP measurement....

Introduction: Reservoir pressure parameters derived from pressure waveforms captured at various arterial sites predict adverse kidney function independently of conventional cuff blood pressure (BP). However, there has never been an analysis directly comparing if associations with kidney function may...

Objectives Non-invasive, cuff-based systems are currently available for the assessment of central haemodynamic parameters. The aim of the current study was to compare measurements of cardiac output (CO) derived from pulse waveform analysis (Vicorder) with an inert gas re-breathing method (Innocor) in...

Purpose/Background/Objective: Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a common manifestation of atherosclerosis and obesity is one of its well-established risk factors 1–5. PAD is classified in intermittent claudication (IC) and critical limb ischemia (CLI), according to the its severity6. Therefore, we...

Objective: To investigate carotid strain and displacement and to assess their relations with arterial stiffness and cardiac systolic and diastolic parameters. Methods: Study population consisted of 40 healthy subjects (aged 17–38, median-22). All subjects underwent comprehensive transthoracic echocardiography...

Background and Objective: Arterial Stiffness (AS) measured as pulse wave velocity has emerged in recent years as a hypertension mediated organ damage with independent prognostic value for Cardiovascular (CV) diseases that has also been discussed as a potential cause of Hypertension (HTN). The aim of...

Introduction: The anatomy of the coelic trunk is highly variable. An understanding of the variations is important in general and vascular surgery due to the implications of disruption and consequent visceral ischaemia. Case Description: A case is described of a 69-year-old woman presenting with undifferentiable...

Objective: To explore the characteristics of pre-existing Cerebral Small Vessel Disease (CSVD) in young patients with Acute Ischemic Stroke (AIS) caused by large artery atherosclerosis or small artery occlusion. Methods: A total of 400 patients with suspected stroke or transient ischemic attack who...

Background: Local pulse wave velocity (c) is widely used as an index of local carotid arterial stiffness. In middle-aged type1 and type2 diabetic patients, arterial stiffness is higher than in healthy people, but much less data are available for young subjects. Our aim was to quantify the changes in...

Background. Central aortic blood pressure (CBP) parameters are increasingly proved to be stronger predictors of cardiovascular outcomes than peripheral blood pressure parameters. Aortic stiffness, which increases with age, alters these parameters. The aim of this study was to compare the CBP parameters...

Background: Troponin T (TnT) is a highly specific biomarker for myocardial infarction (MI). Haemodialysis (HD) patients often have increased arterial stiffness and elevated TnT. Previous studies have linked elevated TnT with worse outcome, even in the absence of MI. The aim of this study was to evaluate...

Introduction: Assessment of pulse wave velocity (PWV) is recognized as a marker of arterial stiffness within human medicine. Non-invasive evaluation of arterial structural changes in relation to atherosclerosis in porcine models of cardiovascular disease, would be valuable in longitudinal assessment...

Introduction: Arterial stiffness is associated with coronary artery disease (CAD). Acute aerobic exercise decreases arterial stiffness, while acute resistance exercise increases arterial stiffness. There is little information on the effect of such exercise on arterial stiffness in older patients with...

Introduction: Grey scale median of the carotid artery intima-media complex (IM-GSM) is a recently introduced measurement thought to reflect the composition of the arterial wall. Carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) has been shown to be a predictor of a future stroke incidence, but the relationship...

Flow in the wake of a coronary artery stenosis induces a bruit in the 300–1500 Hz range that can be heard at the chest wall. It has been hypothesised that this sound is caused by turbulence-induced shear waves which travel through the soft tissue of the thorax. This contribution describes a computational...

Cardiovascular risk assessment more and more makes use of the diagnostic information hidden in the arterial waves propagating in the cardiovascular system. An important factor determining the morphology of the arterial waves is wave reflection which becomes more significant with increasing age and can...

A 73-year-old Caucasian female, presented with sudden loss of vision in the right eye due to a central retinal artery occlusion (CRAO). The patient presented acutely 10-weeks later with a painful right eye due to rubeosis; intraocular pressure (IOP) was 67mmHg. A single anterior chamber injection of...

The lasting legacy of Donald McDonald has been in the establishment of physiological and biophysical principles of the relation of blood pressure and flow in arteries. This relation is determined by physical properties of arteries, among which wall stiffness is a dominant parameter. Increased arterial...

Purpose/Background/Objectives: Aortic stiffness and hemodynamics are established biomarkers for cardiovascular events. Surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) remains the first choice of treatment in most patients with aortic stenosis. We investigated the effect of SAVR on aortic stiffness and the role...

Pulse wave velocity (PWV) is considered a surrogate marker of arterial stiffness and could be useful for characterizing cardiovascular disease progression even in mouse models. Aim of this study was to develop an image process algorithm for assessing arterial PWV in mice using ultrasound (US) images...

Background: Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV) is a measure of arterial stiffness and vascular aging and an important parameter for cardiovascular risk stratification. A previous study showed high prevalence rates of early vascular aging in an adult population from the North of Portugal. The aim of this study...

Background: Turbulent flow downstream of atherosclerotic plaques produces low amplitude shear waves which travel through the chest and can be measured by skin sensors. This acoustic signature may provide a cheap non-invasive way to diagnose arterial disease. We report measurements of shearing oscillations...

Objective: Carotid-femoral Pulse Wave velocity (cfPWV), the gold standard for measuring stiffness, is a marker of organ damage (OLD). Even though cfPWV correlates with casual (BPc), central (CBP) and ambulatory (ABPM) blood pressure (BP), evidence is limited for resistant hypertension (RH). Method:...

Background: Arterial stiffening measured by Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV) predicts cardiovascular events and mortality in adults. It advances with age and seems accelerated in children with certain disease conditions such as chronic kidney disease or diabetes. The aim of this study was to determine factors...

Background: Some studies have shown the interest of measuring central blood pressure (CBP). Usually measured non-invasively through a function transfer by applanation tonometry (Sphygmocor®) CBP can also be calculated by echotracking (Art.Lab®) at the common carotid artery assuming the fact that the...

Background: Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a chronic, inflammatory disease of the axial spine that can manifest with various clinical signs and symptoms1.Cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI), which is calculated based on the stiffness parameter thus obtained, is theoretically independent of changes in...

Objectives: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a devastating lung vascular disease. Despite advances in the diagnosis of this condition, early detection and ascertainment of the genesis of pulmonary hypertension are still a difficult task.We supposed that the method of Single photon emission computed...

Purpose/Background/Objectives: Aortic calcifications and inflammation are independent predictors of adverse cardiovascular events. We sought to investigate the association of aortic calcifications and inflammation with in-hospital morbidity and mortality of patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Methods:...

Background: Left ventricular systolic dysfunction, an independent predictor of heart failure (HF) and cardiovascular mortality, may be worse in South Asians and African-Caribbeans (than Europeans) as they have more adverse cardiovascular risk factor profiles. Objectives: We sought to investigate ethnic...

Objectives: A number of non-invasive devices have been used to measure arterial stiffness in COPD. The aim of this study was to compare the Complior device with the gold standard SphygmoCor Vx device, in patients with COPD and healthy volunteers. Methods: Aortic PWV was measured during a single visit...

Background: Age-related decrease in cerebral blood flow is a risk factor for cognitive decline. Aerobic exercise training improves vascular and cognitive functions. However, the effect of exercise training on age-related reduction in cerebral blood flow is unclear. The present study investigated whether...

Objective: To study the determinants of Arterial Stiffness (AS) in the elderly. Design and method: Cross-sectional, observational study of elderly participants. Blood Pressure (BP) and arterial function parameters were measured with a validated device. Clinical and demographic information was gathered,...

Surgical or critically ill patients often require continuous assessment of cardiac output (CO) for diagnostic purposes or guiding therapeutic interventions. A new method of non-invasive estimation of CO, based on pressure wave analysis, has been recently developed, but its validity has been examined...

Pulse wave velocity (PWV) is gold standard for assessing arterial stiffness. Studies have shown that people with metabolic syndrome have insulin resistance and that after the onset of diabetes, cardiovascular risk is intensely increased, high-sensitive C-reactive protein (hsCRP) (1). Relate influence...

Background: Vasera is a machine developed to evaluate arterial stiffness by measuring pulse wave velocity (PWV) and cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI), apparently independent of blood pressure (BP). The 4-cuff device measures right (R) and left (L) brachial and ankle BP, deriving the CAVI value and cardiac-ankle...

Introduction: Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is an inflammatory rheumatic disease associated with accelerated atherosclerosis and increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Objectives: To assess the local arterial stiffness in carotid artery in subjects with AS compared with controls evaluated by...

ARTIC is a new segmentation-based tracking algorithm used to automatically measure diameter, distension and intima media thickness (IMT) in arteries using B-mode ultrasound. ARTIC is initiated with a mark in the center of lumen and can then perform automatic measurements in about 1000 frames/second....

VascAgeNet is a new European network which will join forces in order to refine, harmonize and promote the vascular ageing concept. It aims to bring innovations in cardiovascular research from bench to bedside and to establish assessment of vascular ageing in clinical practice. The interdisciplinary,...

Objectives: To analyze the association of arterial stiffness with the fibrinogen in general population without previous cardiovascular diseases. Differences by gender. Methods: A cross-sectional study. Study population: From the population assigned to the participating healthcare centres, a cluster...

Objective: Atherosclerotic disease is caused by a combination of systemic, and local factors. The influence of local geometry (affecting local flow conditions) is often neglected. In contrast to the carotid artery, at the iliac-femoral artery region, a large degree of bilateral asymmetry exists. Therefore,...

Objectives: Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) is a validated non-invasive measure of aortic stiffness. Risk factors for cfPWV are well described in adulthood, and furthermore cfPWV is associated with incident cardiovascular disease in adults (1). However, risk factors for arterial stiffness...

Morning blood pressure surge is associated with increased cardiovascular risk, possibly due to its ability to reflect short-term BP variability and/or its link with arterial stiffness. The link between morning BP surge and vascular stiffness is not defined. 689 untreated hypertensives (48±10 years,...

Background: The Opening Angle (OA) is widely used as an index of the residual stresses and strains present in the arterial wall not subjected to internal pressure. The aim of this work was to quantify regional variation of the layer-specific OA in the bovine descending thoracic aorta. Methods: Descending...

Objectives: In resource-poor settings, aPWV’s prognostic power, independent of blood pressure (BP), has potential as an intervention target against ‘hypertension’ and diabetes (T2DM). We compared simple determinants of aPWV in 3 African-origin settings and British Europeans. Methods: Using methods standardised...

Introduction: The prognostic importance of aortic calcification is often attributed to its close association with atherosclerotic plaque but it may relate to its effects on aortic stiffness and be driven by processes distinct from those of atherosclerosis. The aim of the present study was to determine...

Purpose: Aortic stiffness is predictive of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. However, the gold standard method for assessing aortic stiffness, carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity, is time-consuming and requires a trained operator. An alternative approach could be to derive an arterial stiffness...

Objectives: Increased carotid-femoral Pulse Wave Velocity (PWVc-f) identify hypertensive patients at high CV risk, independently of systematic coronary risk evaluation (SCORE). Testosterone is associated with aortic stiffness, however whether this association is different in hypertensive patients with...

Background: Carotid femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) is directly associated with arterial stiffness in major elastic arteries and predicts future cardiovascular events (1). Little is known of cfPWV as a marker of vascular health in children. Semi-automated cuff-based devices for assessing cfPWV are...

Background: Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) is an independent predictor of cardiovascular events and its measurement is recommended by current hypertension guidelines. Few data are available on the progression of PWV over time. The aim of the present study was to assess the progression of...

Objectives: In developing countries, urbanization leads to changes in behavioural lifestyle and malnutrition which may lead to higher rates of cardiovascular disease .1,2 We aimed to assess the association between low body mass index and markers of cardiovascular function like pulse wave velocity in...

Objectives: The aim of our study was to investigate the relationship between glucose metabolism, high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) and aortic stiffness in non-diabetic middle aged metabolic syndrome (MetS) subjects. Methods: We studied a total of 486...

Introduction: Left Main Coronary Artery (LMCA) disease is prognostically the most important coronary lesion. LMCA differs from the other coronaries in having high elastin content. Aortic Pulsatility (AP) is an independent predictor of cardiovascular events in CAD. We hypothesized that pulsatile stress...

Objectives: To compare indices of vascular stiffness and markers of adiposity and inflammation in “healthy” subjects with/without components of the metabolic syndrome (met-x). Methods: Subjects satisfying ≥1 (≥1 Met-X;) and no criteria (0 Met-X) were recruited (IDF 2006). All were lifelong non-smokers,...

Purpose: To examine the acute effect of maximal exercise effort on pulse wave velocity (PWV) and heart rate variability (HRV) in patients with CAD with a range of functional capacity levels, and the association between these parameters 1,2,3. Methods: Thirty-six patients with CAD (62 ± 10 y) ranging...

Objective: Telomere length (TL) has been identified as a marker for biological, cardiovascular aging and cardiovascular events risk. Increased arterial stiffness and intima-media thickness (IMT) are the main signs of arterial aging and strong predictors for the development of cardiovascular disease....