title: Intra- and inter-tester reproducibility of venous occlusion plethysmography: comparison between a manual and a semi-automatic method of blood flow analysis.
abstract: Venous occlusion plethysmography (VOP) is a valid non-invasive method to assess peripheral blood flow (BF) in humans. Our aim was to determine intra- and inter-tester reproducibility of BF analysis using a traditional manual method and a novel system, based on a semi-automatic approach. Ten healthy subjects and ten subjects with chronic heart failure (CHF) were evaluated. Blood flow was measured on the forearm at baseline and after 5 min of circulatory occlusion (reactive hyperemia (RH)). Two testers independently and blindly analyzed each VOP recording. Both methods were highly reproducible intra- and inter-testers. In addition, there was a high association between the methods, since the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for healthy subjects were 0.99, 0.99 and 0.99, and the coefficients of variation (CVs) were 1.8, 2.4 and 1.6% for baseline, RH peak and RH area under the curve, respectively. For CHF subjects, the ICCs were 0.99, 0.98 and 0.99, and the CVs were 2.9, 3.6 and 2.0%. In addition, the time spent on the semi-automatic analyses was shorter (p < 0.05). In conclusion, both methods demonstrated high intra- and inter-tester reproducibility for baseline and RH BF analysis. However, since the semi-automatic method was faster to generate the results, the present study supports its usage for the analysis of BF measured by VOP.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Exercise Sciences-LACE, Federal Fluminense University, Brazil.
authors.forename: Bruno Moreira
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Silva
authors.forename: Fabricia Junqueira
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Neves
authors.forename: Natalia Galito
authors.initials: NG
authors.lastname: Rocha
authors.forename: Mauricio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cagy
authors.forename: Marcio Nogueira
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: de Souza
authors.forename: Antonio Claudio Lucas
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: da Nóbrega
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D057205:Automation, Laboratory / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards*; D001783:Blood Flow Velocity / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005542:Forearm / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000502:physiology; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D010991:Plethysmography / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D015203:Reproducibility of Results