Reference Values for SphygmoCor Measurements in South Africans of African Ancestry

Measurements of blood pressure (BP) together with applanation tonometry at the radial and femoral arteries allow for reproducible assessments of various indexes of arterial stiffness, including peripheral (PP(p)) and central (PP(c)) pulse pressures, peripheral (AI(p)) and central (AI(c)) augmentation indexes, and aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV). In the absence of an outcome-driven and ethnicity-specific reference frame, we defined preliminary diagnostic thresholds for subjects of African descent living in Africa, using the distributional characteristics of these hemodynamic measurements.