Reproducibility of ultrasound Doppler measurement of pulse wave velocity with different methods of assessing the superficial carotid-femoral distance

Aim . To calculate the reproducibility of the Doppler method for measuring carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV), taking into account various methods for establishing the surface distance between measurement points. Material and methods . Forty participants (men, 60%), aged 34,26±16,58 years, participated in this cross-sectional study. All patients underwent 2 sequential Doppler cfPWV measurements at intervals of 20 to 40 minutes, using the carotid-femoral distance obtained with a measuring tape, an electronic tape measure, or calculated using formulas. Results . Concordance analysis revealed a very good agreement for paired cfPWV values in all methods of determining the carotid-femoral distance. Intraclass correlation coefficients were above 0,98 for all three conditions (p