title: Changes in finger-aorta pressure transfer function during and after exercise.
abstract: Noninvasive finger blood pressure has become a surrogate for central blood pressure under widely varying circumstances. We tested the validity of finger-aorta transfer functions (TF) to reconstruct aortic pressure in seven cardiac patients before, during, and after incremental bicycle exercise. The autoregressive exogenous model method was used for calculating finger-aorta TFs. Finger pressure was measured noninvasively using Finapres and aortic pressure using a catheter-tip manometer. When applying the individual TFs found during rest for reconstruction of aortic pressure during all workloads, systolic pressure was increasingly underestimated, with large variation between subjects: +4.0 to -18.1 mmHg. In most subjects, diastolic pressure was overestimated: -3.9 to +5.5 mmHg. Pulse pressure estimation varied between +4.5 and -21.9 mmHg. In all cases, wave distortion was present. Postexercise, error in reconstructed aortic systolic pressure slowly declined, and diastolic pressure was overestimated. During rest, the TF gain had a minimum between 3.65 and 4.85 Hz (Fmin). During exercise, Fmin shifted to frequencies between 4.95 and 7.15 Hz at the maximum workload, with no change in gain. Postexercise, gain in most subjects shifted to values closer to unity, whereas Fmin did not return to resting values. Within each subject, aorta-Finapres travel time was linearly related to mean pressure. During exercise, Fmin was linearly related to both delay and heart rate. We conclude that, during increasing exercise, rest TFs give an increasingly unreliable reconstruction of aortic pressure, especially at higher heart rates.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Rm. M01-214, Meibergdreef 9, NL-1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands. w.stok@amc.uva.nl
authors.forename: Wim J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Stok
authors.forename: Berend E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Westerhof
authors.forename: John M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Karemaker
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001011:Aorta / Q000502:physiology*; D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000502:physiology*; D001795:Blood Pressure Determination / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D015924:Blood Pressure Monitors; D015444:Exercise / Q000502:physiology*; D005080:Exercise Test; D005385:Fingers / Q000098:blood supply*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted