4D.01: A SIMPLE CALCULATOR FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF MEASUREMENTS OF CAROTID-FEMORAL PULSE WAVE VELOCITY AND LOCAL ARTERIAL STIFFNESS RELATIVE TO THE REFERENCE VALUES DATABASE. (June 2015) - Londono, F.
Abstract : Objective: Arterial stiffness has been demonstrated to predict and be related to cardiovascular disease (CVD). Reference values of carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cf-PWV), the gold standard measure of arterial stiffness, and local carotid and femoral arterial stiffness, derived from the distensibility coefficient (DC), have been established. The use of different devices and methods, however, still hampers the widespread clinical use of these reference values. The aim of this work was therefore to create a web-based application that allows easy assessment - for different methodological approaches - of a given measured value of arterial stiffness, with the application providing the percentile reference associated with that specific value. Design and method: Reference values of cf-PWV (11, 092 individuals; age range: 15–97 years, 49.8% men) and local carotid (22, 708 individuals; age range 15–99 years; 54% men) and femoral (5, 069 individuals; age range: 15–87 years; 49.5% men) arterial stiffness were obtained from literature (The Reference Values for Arterial Stiffness' Collaboration 2010) and the database of The Reference Values for Arterial Stiffness' Collaboration. Individuals without CVD and established cardiovascular risk factors (CV-RFs) constituted a healthy subpopulation and were used to establish equations for percentiles of cf-PWV and sex-specific percentiles of carotid and femoral DC across age. Using these established equations, an application was created (in JavaScript) to provide the percentile reference value from routine parameters obtained in clinical practice. Results: The tool can be found at:http://users.ugent.be/∼flondono/ and consists of two panels (see figure). The first panel (1) presents a menu, where the user selects the parameter to be determined (or standardized). Then an application is displayed in the second panel (2): a. Carotid DC; b. Femoral DC; c. cf-PWV, or d. cf-PWV conversion. Subsequently, the user provides a number of inputs which are used to calculate the selected parameter, the percentile and, when relevant, additional information. Conclusions: An easy and intuitive interface was created to assess a given measurement of arterial stiffness relative to know reference values. Figure. No caption available.