title: Cardio-ankle vascular index to screen cardiovascular diseases in patients with end-stage renal diseases.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Cardiovascular diseases constitute major causes of death in patients with chronic kidney diseases. An increase in arterial stiffness predicts the presence of cardiovascular diseases; however, non-invasive arterial stiffness parameters such as pulse wave velocity are confounded by blood pressure.
  
  
  METHODS
  A new arterial stiffness parameter beta for the arterial tree, cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI), was measured. To examine the usefulness of CAVI to screen for the presence of cardiovascular diseases, cross-sectional studies were performed on 68 patients undergoing chronic hemodialysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Stepwise regression analysis indicated that CAVI significantly correlated to age (beta=0.05, p<0.01) but not blood pressure. In addition, CAVI was higher in diabetics than non-diabetics (8.39+/-0.37 vs 7.63+/-0.57, p<0.05). Furthermore, CAVI was markedly elevated in patients with a history of cardiovascular diseases (8.69+/-0.23 vs 6.66+/-0.28, p<0.01). Analysis using the ROC curve has demonstrated that CAVI of 7.55 constitutes the cut-off value for the presence of cardiovascular diseases with both sensitivity and specificity of 0.79.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The present findings suggest that CAVI can be used as a screening test to detect for the presence of cardiovascular diseases in patients undergoing hemodialysis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Saitama Medical University, Saitama, Japan.
authors.forename: Tsuneo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Takenaka
authors.forename: Hitoshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hoshi
authors.forename: Nobutaka
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kato
authors.forename: Kazuyuki
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kobayashi
authors.forename: Hiroshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Takane
authors.forename: Junko
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shoda
authors.forename: Hiromichi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Suzuki
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000842:Ankle / Q000098:blood supply*; D001794:Blood Pressure; D001808:Blood Vessels / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000175:diagnosis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007676:Kidney Failure, Chronic / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D008875:Middle Aged; D012372:ROC Curve; D006435:Renal Dialysis; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity