Functional versus morphological assessment of vascular age in patients with coronary heart disease

Tino Yurdadogan*, Carolin Malsch, Kornelia Kotseva, David Wood, Rainer Leyh, Georg Ertl, Wolfgang Karmann, Lara Müller-Scholden, Caroline Morbach, Margret Breunig, Martin Wagner, Götz Gelbrich, Michiel L. Bots, Peter U. Heuschmann, Stefan Störk

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

Communicating cardiovascular risk based on individual vascular age (VA) is a well acknowledged concept in patient education and disease prevention. VA may be derived functionally, e.g. by measurement of pulse wave velocity (PWV), or morphologically, e.g. by assessment of carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether both approaches produce similar results. Within the context of the German subset of the EUROASPIRE IV survey, 501 patients with coronary heart disease underwent (a) oscillometric PWV measurement at the aortic, carotid-femoral and brachial-ankle site (PWVao, PWVcf, PWVba) and derivation of the aortic augmentation index (AIao); (b) bilateral cIMT assessment by high-resolution ultrasound at three sites (common, bulb, internal). Respective VA was calculated using published equations. According to VA derived from PWV, most patients exhibited values below chronological age indicating a counterintuitive healthier-than-anticipated vascular status: for VAPWVao in 68% of patients; for VAAIao in 52% of patients. By contrast, VA derived from cIMT delivered opposite results: e.g. according to VAtotal-cIMT accelerated vascular aging in 75% of patients. To strengthen the concept of VA, further efforts are needed to better standardise the current approaches to estimate VA and, thereby, to improve comparability and clinical utility.

Original languageEnglish
Article number18164
Pages (from-to)1-10
JournalScientific Reports
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13 Sept 2021

Keywords

  • Aged
  • Aging/pathology
  • Blood Vessels/pathology
  • Carotid Intima-Media Thickness
  • Coronary Disease/pathology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Linear Models
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Pulse Wave Analysis

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