The impact of calibration approaches on the accuracy of oscillometric central aortic blood pressure measurement

BACKGROUND Two fully automated oscillometric devices have become available for the noninvasive assessment of central aortic blood pressure (BP). They tend, however, to underestimate SBP. It has been proposed that calibration by mean/diastolic instead of systolic/diastolic brachial BP may reduce this bias. The present work compares the accuracy of these two calibrations in the Mobil-O-Graph. METHODS Post-hoc analysis of the largest validation study on noninvasive assessment of central BP so far. Data on both calibration approaches were available in 159 patients without atrial fibrillation, who underwent simultaneous invasive and noninvasive assessment of central BP. Noninvasive BP measurements were conducted using the SphygmoCor XCEL (calibration by systolic/diastolic brachial BP only) and the Mobil-O-Graph (calibration by both systolic/diastolic and mean/diastolic brachial BP). RESULTS Measurements of both devices and both calibration methods revealed highly significant correlations for systolic and diastolic central BP with invasively assessed BP (P