Inter-arm Systolic Blood Pressure Difference: A Surrogate for Diagnosis of Peripheral Arterial Disease
CC01-CC04
Correspondence
Dr. VP Sundaravadivel,
Assistant Professor, Department of Physiology, Meenakshi Medical College and Research Institute, Enathur-631552, Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India.
E-mail: vpsundaravel@gmail.com
Introduction: Single arm measurement of Blood Pressure (BP) is routinely done in clinical practice. Significant difference in the inter-arm BP is related to various risk factors of cardiovascular disease Prevalence of Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) is high, but the awareness about the disease and its symptoms are relatively low.
Aim: To assess the prevalence of inter-arm difference in systolic blood pressure in people without any cardiovascular risk factors and to relate the inter-arm BP difference with both symptomatic and asymptomatic peripheral arterial disease.
Materials and Methods: It was a comparative study in which 260 subjects in the age group of 40-70 years participated. Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) inter-arm difference was measured and SBP Inter-Arm Difference (IAD), non-invasive Doppler test was done to diagnose PAD. The results were analysed using t-test.
Results: It was found that 33.08% (86 out of 260) of the subjects had inter-arm SBP difference above 10 mmHg. The total number of subjects diagnosed with PAD were 33.84% (88 out of 260). The odds of patients with IAD to have PAD is 102.6 times higher than patients without IAD {OR=102.6 (42.46-247.94)}. The odds of patients with 15-20 mmHg IAD to have PAD was 6.53 times higher than patients with 10-15 mmHg IAD {OR=6.53 (1.49-28.57)}. IAD in SBP is significantly related to PAD.
Conclusion: It is important to diagnose the PAD at the earlier stage and also measurement of BP on both the arms is one of the cost-effective tool for screening patients with risk factors for PAD.