Comparison of Derived Central Aortic Pressure vs Cuff Peripheral Pressure

Background: Emerging evidence favours Central aortic pressure as a better correlate of cardiovascular events than peripheral BP recorded with sphygmomanometer. Noninvasive devices to calculate the derived central aortic pressures are available now. We want to see the difference of BP between derived central BP vs manual recorded BP and to see whether these BP values are consistent among different sexes and age groups.Materials and methods: In the present study 63 consecutive patients both male and female who attended the cardiology outpatient department were studied. In all these patients blood pressure was recorded both manually by sphygmomanometer and by Mobil-O-Graph® Pulse Wave Analyser (ARC Solver). The Mobil-O-Graph ® system works on the oscillometric recording of pulse waves at the brachial artery site. We recorded the BP in sitting posture. We compared the derived central, manual and device measured BP, cardiac output, and pulse wave velocity between both genders.Results: Among the study population (63 patients) 20 were females and 43 were males with mean age of 58.92±10.9 yrs. The mean systolic and diastolic manually recorded peripheral BP was 127.25 ± 19.89 and 79.25 ± 8.58 mm of Hg respectively, whereas the mean peripheral SBP and DBP recorded by the device was 129.40 ± 21.21 and 81.56 ± 12.83 mm of Hg respectively (comparable p=0.6, 0.2). The mean central aortic SBP & DBP recorded by the device was 117.37 ± 19.17 and 81.67 ± 13.04 mm of Hg with the mean pulse wave velocity of 8.392 ± 1.741 m/sec. There was a statistically significant difference in the central aortic SBP and manual SBP (p=0.005), whereas the difference in DBP was not statistically significant (p=0.2). There is no statistically significant difference in the central and peripheral SBP and DBP recorded by the device among males and females. The device derived parameters including cardiac output, pulse wave velocity also did not show significant difference in both sexes.Conclusion: Derived central aortic systolic pressure recorded by the device is lower than the manually recorded pressure whereas there was no difference in diastolic BP. There is no difference in these BP recordings between the genders.