Browsing by Author "Alhalimi, Taha Ali H"

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Measures of Arterial Stiffness: Standardization, Various Devices, and Measurement Conditions
(The University of Texas at Austin, 2023) Alhalimi, Taha Ali H; Tanaka, Hirofumi
Arterial stiffness, characterized by elevated pulse wave velocity (PWV), is a critical prognostic measure during the progression of arterial diseases that contribute to cardiovascular disease. The inability of the arterial wall to effectively buffer the pulsatile pressure results in disturbed blood flow and added stress on key end-organs including the heart, brain, and kidneys. The overall theme of this dissertation is centered around the utilization of PWV as a measure of arterial stiffness. A series of studies included in this dissertation aimed to better comprehend and improve the measurement of arterial stiffness via PWV. This dissertation is clinically important because it focuses on a critical issue in public health, measures for cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death in most industrial countries. In the first study, we aimed to facilitate the comparison between different measures of arterial stiffness across different studies. We summarized and derived conversion equations for commonly used image-based measures of arterial stiffness to the standard measures of arterial stiffness carotid-femoral PWV. We gathered the conversion equations from the literature, created regression equations, and applied them to 49 healthy participants. Both equations produced local PWV values that were moderately and significantly associated with cfPWV. In the second study, PWV was assessed in 70 participants in varying body positions. Results showed that 10o upper body tilt-up was sufficient to increase PWV significantly from the reference fully supine position. For the last study, there was no significant difference between the recorded PWV when the participants wore different legwear. However, stiff fabric materials increased the measurement error to obtain cfPWV with tonometry. In conjunction, these findings highlight the importance of standardizing the measurement and the utilization of pulse wave velocity in both research and clinical settings to improve the assessment of arterial stiffness and, ultimately, cardiovascular health.
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