Arterial compliance in hypertension and heart failure.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between the presence and degree of arterial compliance impairment and, respectively, the clinical conditions of systemic hypertension and/or heart failure. We investigated 19 patients with hypertension, without heart failure (group A), 13 patients with hypertension and heart failure class NYHA II (group B), 10 patients with coronary heart disease and heart failure class NYHA II (group C) and 7 control patients without clinically relevant cardio-vascular diseases (group D). Compliance was evaluated with a Complior device, by measuring carotid femoral and carotid-radial pulse-wave velocities (PWV).