Peripheral Arterial Stiffness in Acute Pulmonary Embolism and Pulmonary Hypertension at Short-Term Follow-Up

Figures

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  Figure 1. Distribution of the CAVI values for each cohort of patients. Group 1: patients with acute PE (orange line); Group 2: healthy subjects (blue line); Group 3: patients with systemic hypertension (green line); Group 4: patients with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (red line). CAVI was significantly increased in PAH and in acute pulmonary embolism patients compared with healthy subjects and systemic hypertension patients. Abbreviation: CAVI: cardio-ankle vascular index; PE: pulmonary embolism; IPAH: idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension.

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  Figure 2. Boxplots of CAVI values among the different cohorts of patients. Box edges represent the 25th (Q1) and 75th (Q3) quantiles, respectively. The upper whisker is drawn at the greatest value smaller than 1.5 IQR above the third quartile, while the lower whisker is drawn at the smallest value greater than 1.5 IQR below the first quartile. Abbreviations: CAVI: cardio-ankle vascular index; PE: pulmonary embolism; PAH: pulmonary arterial hypertension.

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  Figure 3. Correlation between CAVI (Y-axis) and echo-derived PASP (X-axis) based on patients cohort. The 4 groups of patients are reported in the same scatterplot. Group 1 (patients with acute pulmonary embolism): orange circles; Group 2 and Group 3 (healthy subjects and patients with systemic hypertension): green circles; Group 4 (patients with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension): blue circles. Patients with pulmonary embolism and idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension present higher values of CAVI compared with normal and hypertensive patients. Abbreviations: CAVI: cardio-ankle vascular index; PASP: pulmonary arterial systolic pressure.

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  Figure 4. Predicted probability of high-risk echocardiography criteria of PAH at second observation (within 1 month from diagnosis) based on the CAVI value at PE diagnosis. Abbreviations: CAVI: cardio-ankle vascular index.