The Clinical Significance of Aortic Pulse Wave Velocity in Korean Adults

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: As recent studies show that pulse pressure (PP) is the most potent predictor of cardiovascular diseases, many studies focus on the non-invasive methods to evaluate arterial stiffness influencing on pulse pressure. This study attempted to show the relationship between cardiovascular risk factors and aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV) as a classical factor of arterial stiffness in Korean adults. METHODS: The subjects were 305 adults who had visited a health care center of a university medical center in Suwon from December, 2003 to April, 2004. We had measured the aortic pulse wave velocity through auto PWV analyzer (PP-1000, Hanbyul Meditech, Korea) and had compared the relationships with smoking, total cholesterol, high density lipoprotein, low density lipoprotein, body mass index, sex, age, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, mean blood pressure, pulse pressure, and fasting glucose. RESULTS: There were positive correlation between aortic pulse wave velocity and age (P=0.001), fasting blood sugar (P=0.013), systolic blood pressure (P=0.007), diastolic blood pressure (P=0.038), mean blood pressure (P=0.012), pulse pressure (P=0.035), total cholesterol (P=0.009), low density lipoprotein (P=0.023). There were significant differences of the groups by sex (P=0.029). CONCLUSION: The estimation of the aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV) using the auto PWV analyzer (PP-1000, Hanbyul Meditech, Korea) seems to be a useful diagnostic method of early detection of atherosclerosis for management and prevention of cardiovascular diseases. In future more data about correlations between cardiovascular risk factors and pulse wave velocity and methods managing these factors, and more studies for determining the meaningful values of pulse wave velocity, in larger cases are needed.