Objectives: Recently, echo-tracking-derived measures of arterial stiffness have been introduced in clinical practice for the assessment of one-point pulse wave velocity. The purpose of this study was to find a relation between carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity and one-point carotid pulse wave velocity, and to find a value of one-point carotid pulse wave velocity that predicts carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity higher than 12 m/s.
Methods: A total of 160 consecutive subjects (112 male/48 female, mean age = 51.5 ± 14.1 years; 96 healthy, 44 hypertensives, 13 with aortic valve disease, and 7 with left ventricular dysfunction) were studied. Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity was measured with the SphygmoCor system and one-point carotid pulse wave velocity with high-definition echo-tracking system (ProSound Alpha10; Aloka, Tokyo, Japan).
Results: Both carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity and one-point carotid pulse wave velocity correlated significantly with each other (r = 0.539, p < 0.001) and with age (one-point carotid pulse wave velocity r = 0.618, carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity r = 0.617, p < 0.0001 for both). Median value of carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (7.2 m/s, 95% confidence interval = 6.2-8.9) was systematically higher than that of one-point carotid pulse wave velocity (5.8 m/s, 95% confidence interval = 5-6.6). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.85, identifying the cutoff for one-point pulse wave velocity of 6.65 m/s as the best predictor of carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity more than 12 m/s (sensitivity = 0.818, specificity = 0.819).
Conclusions: One-point carotid pulse wave velocity correlates with carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity, and the cutoff of 6.65 m/s was the best predictor of carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity over 12 m/s.
Keywords: Arterial stiffness; arterial pulse wave velocity; echo-tracking; local carotid stiffness.