Photoplethysmographic study of age-related dynamics of peripheral circulation

Abstract

Age-related functional changes in hemodynamics are caused by slowly progressing disturbances in the regulation of cardiac activity and regional vascular tone. The paper presents a comparative study of limb hemodynamics in people of different age groups. Photoplethysmography was used to study the pulse blood filling of the index finger of young (20.5±1.3 years), middle (55.7±1.8 years) and elderly (85.2±1.1 years) people.
The study showed that a feature of peripheral hemodynamics in young people is high individual variability of the tone of small arteries, caused by pronounced periodic changes in the activity of the parasympathetic and sympathetic divisions of the autonomic nervous system. The balance of parasympathetic and sympathetic regulation mechanisms varies in specific young people. These differences allow us to distinguish three types of limb blood circulation: hypotonic, normotonic, and hypertonic. The selected types of blood circulation differ in the average and modal values of the tone of arteries of small diameter, the variation range of the values of tone of small arteries, the amplitude of the respiratory harmonic in the spectrum of this parameter, the reactivity of the vascular bed of the hand in the dynamics of the test with controlled breathing. In people with the normotonic type, the sympathetic Mayer harmonic may appear in the spectrum of the tone of arteries of small diameter. With natural aging, individual differences in the tone of arteries of small diameter decrease and, by old age, disappear. This may be due to an age-related increase in the activity of the sympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system and morphological changes in the vascular wall.

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Igor B. Isupov
Volgograd State Medical University
Russia

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