Gender-Specific Transfer Functions Might Give More Accurate Estimates of Central Pressure

This study investigates whether individualized transfer functions for estimating central pressures can be derived based on statistical information on the physical properties of the forearm vasculature. Physical parameters of the uniform thin walled artery model are assigned based on clinical measurements and invasive pressure measurements (n = 20) are used to calculate the effective peripheral load. The calculated load is parameterized by a Windkessel model and the variation of the Windkessel parameters is analyzed with gender, age and height. Whilst there is high spread and poor correlation of the data with age and height, there is clear clustering of data with gender. This suggests that model parameters are significantly different in either gender, and gender-specific transfer functions might be more appropriate for accurate reconstruction of central pressure.