Effect of arterial compliance on systolic blood pressure and cardiac function.

To study the effects of arterial compliance on blood pressure and ventricular performance, 33 patients undergoing diagnostic cardiac catheterization who were found to be free of significant cardiac disease were selected. Since blood pressure is a continuous variable, a specific cutting point was not used as a criterion for selection, although 12 patients were classified as hypertensive. The interrelationships between blood pressure, peripheral resistance, arterial compliance, and stroke volume index were investigated by determining the linear correlation between any two desired variables; and by employing partial correlative analysis to determine whether an observed relationship was dependent upon or independent of the influence of a third variable. Peripheral resistance was observed to be independently related to diastolic pressure (r = 0.59, p less than 0.01); while arterial compliance was not only related to stroke volume index (r = 0.67, p less than 0.01) but was also independently related to systolic pressure (r = -0.63, p less than 0.01). Thus, these observations suggest that arterial compliance is a common hemodynamic variable related to both the level of systolic pressure and ventricular performance.