Clinical Aviation Medicine Research: Comparison of Simultaneous Measurements of Intra-Aortic and Auscultatory Blood Pressures with Pressure-Flow Dynamics During Rest and Exercise

摘要

The study provides correlative information with respect to the comparative accuracy of the traditional 'cuff' clinical method of obtaining blood pressure and the laboratory catheterization procedure which measures actual blood pressure. The information is vital to those aviation medicine specialists who study the cardiovascular aspects of work, stress, and fatigue in civil aviation personnel. Two healthy men, 40 and 57 years of age, underwent right-sided cardiac catheterization and retrograde supra-aortic catheterization (1) to compare direct intra-aortic blood pressures with those recorded simultaneously by auscultation of the brachial artery; and (2) to study the pattern of pressure and flow dynamics during bicycle work at moderate, strenuous and maximal intensities. In most instances systolic pressures measured by auscultation were in close agreement with the directly recorded measurements. The indirectly measured diastolic pressures were consistently higher than the directly recorded values in one subject and they were consistently lower than the directly measured diastolic pressures for the other subject. Neither the muffling nor the cessation of sound could be closely identified with minimal intra-aortic pressures. Systolic and mean pressures, minute flow, stroke volume and a-v oxygen difference increased with greater work intensities. (Author)