Oscillometric assessment of arterial stiffness in everyday clinical practice

Measurement of carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) is considered the gold standard for assessing arterial stiffness. Although widely used in clinical and observational studies, the detection of cfPWV has not yet been applied in everyday clinical practice due to technical and procedural difficulties. We, therefore, evaluated the applicability of oscillometric cfPWV assessment for everyday clinical practice. Eighty-nine patients were prospectively included in the study. Oscillometric calculations of cfPWV were performed with Tel-O-GRAPH and tonometric calculations with Sphygmocor. The accuracy, reproducibility, reliability and robustness of Tel-O-GRAPH calculations in different clinical situations were evalu??ated. The mean study population age was 48.8±19.1 years. More than half (59.6%) of the patients were male, and 15.1% were smokers. The mean difference of PWV between devices was 0.49±1.26 m s^-1 (P<0.0001), and the Pearson correlation index was 0.86 (P<0.0001). The coefficient of variation and intraclass correlation coefficients between three single measured PWV values with the Tel-O-GRAPH and Sphygmocor were 2.38±6.13% vs. 6.3±4.33% (P<0.05) and 0.99; 0.99; and 0.99 vs. 0.78; 0.84; and 0.71, respectively. For Tel-O-GRAPH, there was no statistically significant difference between PWV in seated vs. supine positions or by experienced or inexperienced users. High reproducibility and reliability of the calculated single PWV values with Tel-O-GRAPH and considerable performance accuracy compared with Sphygmocor were observed. The reported evidence suggests that oscillometry might evolve as a favored method for the assessment of the PWV in everyday clinical practice and in clinical studies due to its ease of use, accuracy and robustness.