AJP - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, Vol 246, Issue 4 516-R532, Copyright © 1984 by American Physiological Society
An illustration of the experimental range of variation of blood pressure
A. S. Iberall
The nominal uniformity of long-term mean pressure (approximately 100 mmHg
at heart level) for all mammalian species belies the broad nature of its
variance, which is found at many time scales. Such variations should be a
useful index of physiologically normal and pathological processes. However,
it is dubious whether a scientifically meaningful determination of central
blood pressure at its many process scales can be achieved from a few
isolated measurements: to cite a common and highly significant instance,
measurement made by a physician on a patient during one or two office
visits. The data presented here are far from exhaustive (a few reports in
the literature and detailed longitudinal data on 1 subj), but they serve to
illustrate a protocol and a sample of the physiological results that might
be expected if data were gathered for larger populations. The basic scales
of interest lie in the lower-frequency domain, involving periods of
fluctuations longer than tens of minutes.
