A Comparative Study of Brachial–Ankle Pulse Wave Velocity and Heart–Finger Pulse Wave Velocity in Korean Adults

Abstract

Arterial stiffness is considered an index of vascular aging. The brachial–ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV) method is widely used because of its proven effectiveness; and the pulse wave velocity measurement method using both electrocardiogram (ECG) and photoplethysmogram (PPG) is actively being studied due to the convenience of measurement and the possibility of miniaturization. The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the effects of age and gender in Korean adults using both the baPWV method and the PWV method with ECG and finger PPG (heart–finger PWV). The measurements have been carried out for 185 healthy subjects of Korean adults, and the results showed that the baPWV was highly correlated with age in both genders (r = 0.94 for both males and females). However, the correlation values in heart–finger PWV measurement were significantly lower than those of baPWV (r = 0.37 for males and r = 0.71 for females). Although the heart–finger PWV method is suitable for mobile applications because it can be easily miniaturized while maintaining its signal quality, these results show that the heart–finger PWV method is not as effective as baPWV at evaluating the arterial stiffness.

Novel Technique to Measure Pulse Wave Velocity in Brain Vessels Using a Fast Simultaneous Multi-Slice Excitation Magnetic Resonance Sequence

“…In this study, heart-finger PWV in a healthy subject was similar to the previous global PWV [ 30 ]. However, since this value was different from that of cerebral-artery PWV between CCA and ICA, appropriate attention is necessary when assessing vascular stiffness in cerebral-artery PWV using devices that measure global PWV.…”

Relationship between physical fitness and arterial stiffness in Korean older adults

“…Normal values for baPWV in different age groups vary according to the race and the country of the study was conducted. [ 39 , 40 ] Our study results showed a mean BaPWV of 1640.39 ± 309.20 cm/s. According to the 2013 National Physical Fitness project in Korea, 283 older adults showed baPWV in the age group 70 to 74 years of 1617.9 ± 244.4.…”

Pulse-wave velocity assessments derived from a simple photoplethysmography device: Agreement with a referent device

“…In contrast, PPG htPWV had only moderate overall agreement with the referent caPWV. Tsai et al ( 7 ) and Cho et al ( 8 ) conducted the only prior studies comparing PPG against criterions. Tsai et al ( 7 ) reported a moderate correlation ( r = 0.68, p < 0.01) between PPG finger-toe PWV and tonometric cfPWV as well as higher PWV values (from both devices) in subjects with hypertension and dyslipidemia, while Cho et al ( 8 ) showed a strong correlation in females ( r = 0.79, p < 0.01) but not males ( r = 0.34, p = 0.34), between PPG hfPWV and oscillometric brachial-ankle PWV.…”

“…Several studies have compared PPG-based PWV assessments to traditional PWV techniques with mixed findings (i.e., r = 0.34-0.95) (7)(8)(9)(10)(11). The fact that these studies failed to consistently demonstrate strong relationships between PPG and criterion PWV techniques is likely partially attributed to the fact that these studies compared different arterial segments, and thus are not directly comparable.…”