This research shows that pulse pressure is a fairly good predictor of cardiovascular events. I believe this is because it is a measure of the compliance (elasticity) of blood vessel walls, which is related to atherosclerotic disease (which decreases compliance making vessels behave more like a rigid pipe) and general physical fitness (increasing compliance making vessels more like a balloon). Hard arteries result in a large difference between systolic and diastolic pressures as blood pressures drop off quickly.
After systole the pressure drops off in an exponential curve which can be described by a logarithmic function (at least in theory). The rate constant for this logarithmic decay could easily be calculated from the pulse pressure and pulse rate and I think this calculated parameter would be a better measure of compliance than pulse pressure alone. Does anyone disagree?
thank you Mr Anthony Evan Lewis for your answer, juste i want to know if the waveform of the heart pressure influence the waveform of blood Flow rate ?
After answering this question two years ago I did the calculus for the exponential decay curve which occurs after the systolic peak and before the diastolic trough. If the pressure is plotted as log pressure against time you get a straight line (approximately). The slope of this line can be derived. It is proportional to compliance (C) multiplied by resistance (R) of the blood vessels (RC).
I wrote an app for my iPhone in BASIC which was fun to play with in the ICU. Unfortunately I could not find a way to separate the two components R and C and in disease states hardening of the arteries increases resistance and decreases compliance. This means the two factors tend to cancel each other out, making the calculation of RC less sensitive. But the program can help us understand sepsis cases where resistance drops over time.
Some people use the pulse pressure, which is systolic pressure minus diastolic pressure, but this does not take into account the pulse rate. The slower the heart rate the longer the time between the systolic peak and the diastolic trough. This gives more time for the blood pressure to drop off as blood flows away from the heart. Consequently the diastolic pressure drops as heart rate decreases. But if we calculate RC it takes into account all three factors: Systolic Pressure (PS), Diastolic Pressure (DP) and heart rate (HR).
Perhaps I should write an article about this, but who would publish it?