Dr Nema's Natural Therapies

The Clinical Value of Arterial Stiffness

Arterial stiffness is an independent predictor of cardiovascular risk. Arterial

stiffness is a measure of target organ damage indicating the need for lifestyle

and drug intervention The DVP waveform is independent of local changes of the

vasculature but determined by large artery stiffness (estimated by SI) and

vascular tone (estimated by RI). SI is highly correlated with PWV, as shown

below, and RI is determined by the systemic vascular tone Endothelial

Function Measurement. The DVP waveform is also very sensitive to the vascular

tone of the whole arterial tree. CardioTrack automatically analyses the finger pulse

to determine a measure of arterial stiffness and a measure of vascular tone.

The change in the DVP waveform in response to an endothelial dependant

vasodilator such as salbutamol (albuterol) can be used to assess endothelium

function. Salbutamol can be administered using an inhaler making this a very

simple test to perform in the clinic or at the bedside.

The CardioTrack uses a high fidelity photo-plethysmography transducer

with signal conditioning circuit to obtain an extremely accurate and noise free

signal of the DVP waveform. This is a simple non-operator dependent

measurement, which is well tolerated by the subject. In addition, a unique

control system maintains the light transmission at the optimum level to

accurately follow blood volume changes, independent of the subject's finger size.

The many advanced features include; a high-resolution touch sensitive colour

display giving real time blood volume pulse waveforms; signal averaging

with advanced rejection/acceptance criteria; and user customisation of many

of the analysis parameters. The CardioTrack measurements may be reviewed

at the time, during the test, or at a later date from memory, which can hold

up to 10,000 test results including the waveform. The unit can be connected

to the USB port of a PC running PCA 2-Upload software. This allows the database

including the waveforms to be uploaded to a PC for viewing, storage, report

generation, data trending and export to other applications.

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