[Reproducibility of the measurement of humeral artery diameter, velocity of carotido-femoral pulse wave and digital pulse wave in normal subjects].

The aim of this study was to assess the intra-observer reproducibility at short and medium term of three non-invasive methods of arterial measurement: in the same day eight volunteers underwent five successive measurements of brachial artery diameter by two dimensional pulsed Doppler of the carotido-femoral pulse wave velocity by a piezoelectric transducer. The measurements were repeated three times at two weeks' interval. The short term (same day) and medium term (after several weeks) reproducibility of the first two methods of measurement was good: 4.69 +/- 2.37%/4.24 +/- 1.90% and 4.09 +/- 1.16%/5.02 +/- 1.71% respectively for brachial artery diameter and carotido-femoral pulse wave velocity. The reproducibility of the method of measuring digital pulse wave velocity was 10.64 +/- 3.50%/11.62 +/- 4.25%, confirming the greater variability of this parameter. Our results with these noninvasive techniques indicate that they may be used to study the arterial system and could be clinically useful in the surveillance of hypertensive patients.