Identification of heart disease-prone personality using oscillometric blood pressure measurements.

BACKGROUND By using the conventional method of measuring two-points (systolic and diastolic) blood pressure, it is difficult to differentiate a heart disease-prone personality from normals. Recently, an oscillometric method that reflects the personalized trait of blood pressure was developed by one author. OBJECTIVE By using this new measurement technique, this study intended to test the possibility of differentiating a heart disease-prone personality (type A or type D) from normal people. METHODS TPA scale in MMPI-2 and DS14 were used for screening type A and D. Oscillometric waveforms created by the cuff pressure were segmented into window blocks based on a single beat at a minimum, allowing this method to extract maximal top and bottom amplitudes in each window block. Then, a spectrogram using a short-time Fourier transform was applied to discriminate between character types in extracted blood pressure patterns with linear discriminant analysis. RESULTS Compared to a normal personality, type A and type D personalities displayed a lower frequency response on STFT with maximum negative amplitudes than normals. In particular, the type D personality showed a lower frequency response than the type A personality. CONCLUSION These results could provide a new qualitative method for measuring different biological indices between type A or D personalities and normals.