Carotid-vertebral artery blood transit time: results in healthy subjects and patients with schizophrenia and brain disease.

Estimation of blood transit time in the neck and the extension of this into the head was made by a method of electrical impedance, over a wide age range, in 159 healthy subjects, 160 schizophrenic patients, and 199 patients with organic brain disease. In each case, the distance between the electrocardiogram and the next succeeding pulse-volume impedance wave was measured and averaged over 30 serial wave forms. Chronological age proved a significant variable, transit times lengthening progressively with the age, but only for measurements extending into the head. Sex and hemispheric laterality played no significant role. With age held constant, mean transit times into the head were significantly prolonged in both groups of patients as compared with controls. No significant differences were found however between means of psychiatric andneurological patients. It is suggested that these results reinforce the organic etiology of schizophrenia.