New non-invasive indexes of arterial stiffness are significantly correlated with severity and complexity of coronary atherosclerosis.

Background: Endothelial dysfunction and increased arterial stiffness gradually develop before the manifestation of catastrophic cardiovascular events. Therefore, detection and assessment of vascular function are required to address pre-existing pathological conditions. However, the currently available diagnostic devices and methods are insufficient due to variability among investigators and the time-consuming nature of manual procedures.

Methods: Recently, novel devices were developed for the detection of both arterial stiffness and endothelial dysfunction in a single blood pressure measurement using a cuff-oscillometric technique (AVE-1500, Shisei Datum, Japan). API (arterial pressure volume index) is defined as the reciprocal of the slope of the tangent of the brachial artery pressure-volume curve, and AVI (arterial velocity pulse index) is defined as the ratio of the difference between the ejection and reflection waves. In the present study, we performed retrospective, cross-sectional analyses of subjects (n = 102; mean age = 70.5 ± 10.4 years) with detailed coronary angiographic examinations and clinical background parameters.

Results: After adjusting for various variables using multiple linear regression analyses, we found that API, but not AVI, was significantly correlated with coronary artery severity and complexity scores.

Conclusions: We propose that API may be a new vascular index useful for monitoring and assessing the severity and complexity of atherosclerosis in subjects with coronary artery disease and for evaluating atherosclerotic diseases.