Response to Modeled Decomposition of Aortic Pressure Waveforms Does Not Provide Estimates for Pulse Wave Velocity

Abstract

We thank Hermeling et al1 for their interest in our recent study on the use of a single pressure pulse wave for the estimation of aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV).2 The main aim of the study was to propose a noninvasive and also a nonintrusive means of measuring aortic PWV. Aortic PWV is conventionally estimated from transit time (TT) between the carotid and femoral arteries, and this requires exposure of the groin. In addition, in many subjects with excessive adiposity in the groin area, it is difficult to obtain reliable femoral pulses. We agree that any noninvasive method has a certain number of assumptions and compromises, but we believe that we have obtained acceptable agreement between aortic PWV estimated from the single pulse method and aortic PWV measured directly using noninvasive external tonometric …