Pulse contour changes in carotid and foreleg arterial systems

¹ Department of Physiology, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, Georgia

In both the carotid and foreleg vessels of the dog the whole of the aortic pulse seemed propagated at a uniform velocity. In the upper carotid and axillary arteries, a narrowed systolic peak developed in transit; this peak was reached at the same time through the length of the elastic vessels. In the muscular brachial artery, the peak was propagated without clear change. Occlusions of various branches of the leg bed gave no firm clue to the origin of this narrowed peak, for they tended simply to induce pressure oscillations in the axillary vessel which usually obscured the normal pulse form. A similar pulse mapping in a common carotid artery occluded 12–15 cm from its origin sometimes showed evidence of a propagated reflected wave. At other times, as much as 6 cm of the vessel acted as a single vibrating unit, with identically timed waves. Length of the occluded carotid artery could not be told from the peak-to-peak intervals seen on the pulses.