Large Artery Stiffness in Health and Disease: JACC State-of-the-Art Review

By J. Chirinos, P. Segers, T. Hughes, R. Townsend. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2019

792 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A healthy aorta exerts a powerful cushioning function, which limits arterial pulsatility and protects the microvasculature from potentially harmful fluctuations in pressure and blood flow. Large artery (aortic) stiffening, which occurs with aging and various pathologic states, impairs this cushioning function and has important consequences on cardiovascular health, including isolated systolic hypertension, excessive penetration of pulsatile energy into the microvasculature of target organs that operate at low vascular resistance, and abnormal ventricular-arterial interactions that promote left ventricular remodeling, dysfunction and failure. Large artery stiffness independently predicts cardiovascular risk and represents a high-priority therapeutic target to ameliorate the global burden of cardiovascular disease. We provide an overview of key physiologic and biophysical principles related to arterial stiffness, the impact of aortic stiffening on target organs, non-invasive methods for the measurement of arterial stiffness, mechanisms leading to aortic stiffening, therapeutic approaches to reduce it, and clinical applications of arterial stiffness measurements.

Subfields: Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7c7887f1a210b7ec66cfd3020eb3d50541f2ab19