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Updated: Mar 27, 2026

Continuous Venous-Arterial Doppler Ultrasound During a Preload Challenge
Published on: January 20, 2023
Upper limbs total occlusion pressure assessment: Doppler ultrasound reproducibility and determination of predictive
André T Bezerra de Morais1, Mikhail Santos Cerqueira1, Rafael Moreira Sales1
1Department of Physiotherapy, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil.
Abstract:
Total occlusion pressure (TOP) is an important variable to ischaemic exercise training because the optimal pressure of flow restriction (OPR), applied during this exercise modality, is derived from it. Despite the common use of Doppler ultrasound (DU) to determine the TOP, the reproducibility of this assessment was not evaluated yet. Given this, the objective was to evaluate the reproducibility of DU for the measurement of TOP in upper limbs and determine the predictive variables. Thirteen male volunteers attended three times to the laboratory. On the 1st day, we assessed arm circumference (AC), systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic (DBP), and brachial artery TOP. On 2nd and 3rd days, only TOP was assessed. We found a coefficient of variation of 5·6% and an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0·795 for the DU. In the analysis of TOP predictive variables, the Spearman coefficients (R) were 0·813 (SBP), 0·786 (DBP) and 0·388 (AC). Therefore, these results support that DU has good reproducibility for the TOP and that SBP and DBP should be considered to the determination of TOP in upper limbs.
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