In critically ill patients monitored with an arterial catheter, the arterial pressure signal provides two types of information that may help the clinician to interpret haemodynamic status better: the mean values of systolic, diastolic, mean and pulse pressures; and the magnitude of the respiratory variation in arterial pressure in patients undergoing mechanical ventilation. In this review we br...

Insulin resistance has recently been found to be a common feature of essential hypertension. We have tested the hypothesis that reduced skeletal muscle blood flow in response to insulin may at least partially account for the wide range of insulin sensitivity observed in normotensive subjects. To this end, we studied 19 lean (body mass index £27) subjects exhibiting basal mean arterial pressures...

OBJECTIVE Evaluate the ability of clonidine to reduce pulmonary arterial pressure in patients with pulmonary hypertension undergoing heart surgery, either by reducing the pressure values from the direct measurement of pulmonary arterial pressure or by reducing or eliminating the need for intraoperative dobutamine and nitroprusside. METHOD Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, comparat...

Increased arterial stiffness results in increased characteristic impedance of the aorta and increased pulse wave velocity, which increases systolic and pulse pressures. An association between increased pulse pressure and adverse cardiovascular events has been found in normotensive and hypertensive patient populations. Increased pulse pressure has also been associated with thickening of the caro...

BACKGROUND The effect of thoracic epidural block on splanchnic blood flow is unclear. It remains to be resolved if sympathetic block, increases or decreases regional splanchnic blood flow and whether regional splanchnic flow becomes dependent on cardiac output or perfusion pressure. A clear understanding of the regional haemodynamic consequences of an epidural block may modify practice with res...

Efferent activity in the phrenic nerve was recorded during induced hypotension and hypertension in anaesthetized, paralysed, artificially ventilated dogs. Changes in arterial pressure were induced with infusions of sodium nitroprusside, noradrenaline and angiotensin II, after which ventilation was adjusted to return the PaCO2 near to control values. The PaO2 was maintained above chemoreceptor t...

Measurements of cerebral spinal fluid pressure, arterial pressure, and internal carotid artery blood flow were obtained in a series of patients during a Valsalva maneuver. During straining (phase II), an 11% reduction in mean arterial pressure was associated with a 21% decrease in internal carotid flow from control values; and following release (phase IV), the 19% increase in mean arterial pres...

INTRODUCTION The effect of mean arterial pressure titration to a higher level on microcirculation in septic shock patients with previous hypertension remains unknown. Our goal is to assess the effect of mean arterial pressure titration to a higher level on microcirculation in hypertensive septic shock patients. METHODS This is a single-center, open-label study. Hypertensive patients with sept...