Heart-Thigh Cuff Pulse Wave Velocity: A Novel Nontechnical Measure of Arterial Stiffness

BACKGROUND: Recently, a novel index of arterial stiffness was developed to eliminate the placements of transducers on the carotid and femoral arteries and to make the measurement substantially easier. We evaluated the agreement of this new methodology with the well-established carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV). METHODS: A total of 50 adults (28 men and 22 women) varying widely in age and blood pressure were studied. Heart-thigh pulse wave velocity (htPWV) and cfPWV were measured and compared. RESULTS: Mean values of cfPWV and htPWV were 713 ± 145 and 699 ± 150 cm/s and were not significantly different (P = 0.43). Both cfPWV and htPWV were significantly associated with age (r = 0.80 and 0.58), body mass index (r = 0.44 and 0.31), and systolic blood pressure (r = 0.42 and 0.41). The 2 pulse wave velocity measures demonstrated a strong linear association with a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.64 (P < 0.001). This agreement was consistent with the results of the Bland-Altman plot. CONCLUSION: The automatic htPWV method, which permits the data acquisition with minimum technical skill, time, and intrusion in an operator-independent fashion, has good potential as a screening device for assessing arterial stiffness in a clinical setting.