Aortic stiffness: a new Doppler echocardiographic measure predictive of systolic blood pressure in children

Children's Medical Center, Division of Pediatric Cardiology, Richmond, Virginia.

Aortic stiffness, the maximal frequency shift in the descending aorta divided by the Doppler acceleration time, was studied in 384 eleven year old twin children. The extent to which this measurement provided a prediction of systolic blood pressure that was independent of body size, heart rate, cardiac contractility and left ventricular mass was investigated. Aortic stiffness, after adjustment for height and weight, correlated significantly with systolic blood pressure (r = 0.22, p less than 0.01), but not with diastolic blood pressure. The short- (r = 0.82) and longer- (r = 0.68) term reproducibility of aortic stiffness was high. This measure appears to be a more powerful predictor of systolic blood pressure than is left ventricular mass. Aortic stiffness is a highly reproducible Doppler variable that may explain in part the contribution of the aortic wall elastic properties to the level of systolic blood pressure in preadolescent children at rest.

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