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European Journal of Echocardiography Advance Access originally published online on September 16, 2008
European Journal of Echocardiography 2009 10(1):36-43; doi:10.1093/ejechocard/jen236
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Published on behalf of the European Society of Cardiology. All rights reserved. © The Author 2008. For permissions please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Arterial stiffness and ventricular stiffness: a couple of diseases or a coupling disease? A review from the cardiologist's point of view

Francesco Antonini-Canterin1,*, Scipione Carerj2, Vitantonio Di Bello3, Giovanni Di Salvo4, Salvatore La Carrubba5, Olga Vriz6, Daniela Pavan7, Alberto Balbarini3, Gian Luigi Nicolosi1 On behalf of the Research Group of the Italian Society of Cardiovascular Echography (SIEC)

1 Division of Cardiology, ARC, S. Maria degli Angeli Hospital, Via Montereale, 24, 33170 Pordenone, Italy
2 Institute of Cardiology, University of Messina, Messina, Italy
3 Cardiac and Thoracic Department, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
4 Department of Pediatric Cardiology, Second University of Naples, Monaldi Hospital, Naples, Italy
5 Department of Internal Medicine, Villa Sofia Hospital, Palermo, Italy
6 Division of Cardiology, San Daniele del Friuli Hospital, Udine, Italy
7 Division of Cardiology, S.Vito al Tagliamento Hospital, S.Vito al Tagliamento, Italy

Received 23 June 2008; accepted after revision 23 August 2008; online publish-ahead-of-print 16 September 2008.

* Corresponding author. Tel: +39 0434 399 462; fax: +39 0434 399 197. E-mail address: cardiologia{at}aopn.fvg.it


  Abstract

The assessment of arterial stiffness, a common feature of ageing, exacerbated by many common disorders such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, or renal diseases, has become an attractive tool for identifying structural and functional abnormalities of the arteries in the preclinical stages of the atherosclerotic disease. Arterial stiffness has been recognized as an important pathophysiological determinant of systolic blood pressure and pulse pressure increases and therefore the cause of cardiovascular complications, demonstrating also an independent predictive value for cardiovascular events. Although there are many techniques and indices currently available, their large clinical application is limited by a lack of standardization, with important difficulties when one try effectively to measure, quantify, and compare. Moreover, information on the ‘heart-vessel coupling disease’, in which combined stiffness of both heart and arteries interact to limit cardiovascular performance and its possible implications in different clinical conditions, is still not well known. We overviewed main methods and indices used to estimate arterial stiffness and aimed to provide an insight into the knowledge of the ventricular–arterial coupling from the cardiologist's point of view.

Keywords: Arterial stiffness; Ventricular stiffness; Ventricular–arterial coupling; Echo-tracking


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