[Venous distensibility in essential hypertension]

Using venous occlusive plethysmography, venous distensibility was examined in 85 hypertensive patients and in 21 normal men. Venous distensibility in the hypertensive versus normal subjects was significantly lower, being inversely depended on the blood pressure level. Venous distensibility depended directly on the blood flow in the forearm and inversely on the resistance of the resistive vessels at rest. This may indicate that the reduction of venous distensibility was caused by both functional and structural changes characteristic of both resistive and capacitance vessels. It appears that functional and structural alterations in the system of low pressure, along with an elevated resistance of the arterioles, were actively involved in changes of the peripheral resistance and the development of a hypertensive state.