1 Non-invasive measurements of blood pressure (BP) are method-specific estimates of actual blood pressure. The agreement of the auscultatory Korokoff V ('disappearance' of sound, kv) and Korokoff IV ('sound muffling' kiv) cut-off points in measuring diastolic blood pressure (DBP) was evaluated in healthy subjects in the presence of various controlled inodilatory interventions.2 Eating (n = 8), 10 min i.v. infusion of 1 ,ug min-' isoprenaline and adrenaline (n = 12), p.o. administration of 40 mg of the PDE-III inhibitors isomazole and meribendan (n = 18) and p.o. administration of 1200 mg celiprolol (n = 15) caused evident chrono-inodilatory responses: average HR increases of 7, 19, 10, 17, 17 and 8 beats min-1, estimated CO increases of 1.6, 4.5, 2.3, 1.9, 2.6 and 1.8 1 min-1 and average shortening of QS2c of 18, 41, 8, 37, 42 and 9 ms for food, isoprenaline, adrenaline, isomazole, meribendan and celiprolol, respectively. 3 In general, there was good agreement between DBPkv and DBPkIv measurements before the administration of the inodilatory treatments (bias DBPkv-DBPkIv: 1-2 mm Hg) but the extent of inodilatory DBP reduction (-8, -6, -10, -2, -7 and -8 mm Hg according to DBPkIv for food, isoprenaline, adrenaline, isomazole, meribendan and celiprolol, respectively) was substantially overestimated when based on Korotkoff-V rather than -IV (bias DBPkv-DBPkIv in estimating the inodilatory effect on DBP: -8, -12, 1, -13, -12 and -7 mm Hg for food, isoprenaline, adrenaline, isomazole, meribendan and celiprolol, respectively). 4 This bias on DBP had some impact on calculated mean blood pressure but the bias on TPR was substantially reduced: for the largest inodilatory TPR reduction, caused by isoprenaline, DBPkjv related estimates were on average -345 dyn s cm-5; the DBPkv derived estimates were only 51, 95% CI: -96 to -7 dyn s cm-5 larger; this is explained by the blunting of the DBP error propragation by the inodilatory rise of SBP and CO. 5 Measurements of DBP based on Korotkoff-IV and -V criteria should be seen as distinctly different and specific variates of inodilatory cardiovascular behaviour. The former is likely to be more accurate, whilst the latter is of value because of its high sensitivity.Keywords blood pressure non-invasive bias Korotkoff sounds food intake isoprenaline meribendan celiprolol inodilators