Functional arterial stiffness: The correlation between pulse volume and age in apparently healthy subjects

Background: Arterial wall thickness occurs with age in humans and is a strong predictor of cardiovascular disease risk. Age-related increase in arterial wall thickness is observed in the absence of atherosclerosis and hypertension. Measures of wall thickness are currently used as surrogates for and intermediate end points of atherosclerosis. Pulse volume refers to the movement of the vessel wall during the passage of the pulse wave and the stroke volume of the ventricles. The condition of the vessel wall affects the pulse volume. Therefore inthe present study we studied the changes in arterial pulse volume with age.Methods: The study was conducted on 40 volunteers from general population having no apparent disease. The subjects were divided into two groups: Group- I and Group-II. The Pulse Volume was recorded by Pulse Transducer and Student Physiograph (Inco Ambala, India). Normal arterial pulse was recorded and the rate, rhythm and average amplitude for one minute were calculated. Ratio of averaged Pulse Amplitude (PA) and Mean Arterial Pressure (MAP) of each subject was also calculated.Results: The mean age (years) of subjects in group-I was lower (19.301.25) as compared to group-II (61.605.91) (p< 0.001). The important finding of our study was the pulse amplitude (mm) (which represent the pulse volume) was significantly lower (7.241.36) in group II as compared to group I (19.106.87). We also calculated the ratio of Pulse amplitude and Mean Arterial which was significantly lower in group II as compared to group I.Conclusion: Our data suggests that the pulse transducer and physiograph can easily record the pulse volume index and asses the cardiovascular risk.