Central systolic blood pressure (cSBP) to brachial systolic blood pressure (brachSBP) ratio reproducibility during antihypertensive therapy.

Higher CSBP than brachial SBP in individual patient increases cardiovascular (CV) risk. For follow-up it is important to assess the reproducibility of such measurements. The aim of this study was to assess the reproducibility of these differences, expressed as a CSBP/BrachSBP ratios. Eighty-three patients on antihypertensive therapy were analysed for the reproducibility of such ratios after time interval of several month up to several years. For CSBP estimation, we used the Arteriograph (Tensiomed Ltd.), based on blood pressure measurements by cuff on oscillometric principle, using pulse wave analysis (PWA) for assessment of CSBP. The proportion of patients retained the same characteristics (either higher central or higher peripheral SBP) between the first and second measurement was 71.1 %. The association between 1st and 2nd measurement, was statistically significant, p < 0.001. In our study, a high proportion (60 %) of treated hypertensive patients had CSBP higher than brachial SBP, which may adversely influence their prognosis. This characteristic is highly reproducible. Taking into the account these differences may increase the exactness of CV risk estimation and may contribute to explanation of residual risk of individual patient (Tab. 3, Fig. 1, Ref. 28).