Noninvasive Assessment of Arterial Stiffness Using Oscillometric Methods: baPWV, CAVI, API, and AVI

tomatic Korean subjects 4) .After the development of baPWV, the cardioankle vascular index (CAVI) with PWV and BP measurements has also been developed.CAVI is adjusted for BP based on the stiffness parameter β and is expressed as arterial stiffness independent of BP.We have previously reported that CAVI showed a weaker correlation with systolic BP than with baPWV and was not affected by changes in BP during measurement 5) .Many evidences have suggested that CAVI is associated with arteriosclerotic diseases, such as coronary artery diseases, cerebral infarction, and chronic kidney diseases, as well as with various coronary risk factors 6) .An improvement in these risk factors decreased CAVI.In the Journal of Atherosclerosis and Thrombosis, CAVI was reported to be a predictor for cardiovascular events, independent of traditional coronary risk factors in 1562 outpatients with metabolic disorders 7) and to be associated with the executive function assessing letter word fluency test in140 community-dwelling elderly individuals 8) .Recently, novel, noninvasive indices of arterial stiffness using oscillometric BP, arterial pressurevolume index (API), and arterial velocitypulse index (AVI) evaluation have been developed.API was reported to correlate with baPWV, cfPWV, and carotid arterial compliance, suggesting that it may be used for evaluating arterial stiffness.Moreover, AVI was suggested to indicate the enhancement of reflected waves and to be associated with arterial stiffness.These two indices were correlated with the known risk factors of cardiovascular disease, carotid IMT, and CAVI in 7248 healthy Japanese adults 9) .In this issue of the Journal of Atherosclerosis and Thrombosis, Yamanashi, et al. demonstrated that API and AVI maintained positive associations with the mean carotid IMT in 2809 participants aged ≥ 40 years who underwent Japanese national medical checkups.Fur-