Effects of vasoactive drugs on the relationship between ECG-pulse wave delay time and arterial blood pressure in ICU patients

This study focused on the relationship between arterial blood pressure (ABP) and the delay time from ECG to radial pulse (PWDT) with and without vasoactive drugs, to learn if PWDT could be a useful monitoring parameter yielding information complementary to that obtained from ABP. Fourteen ICU patient records from the MIMIC Database were used as subjects. Automated QRS detection and ABP pulse detection algorithms were employed to obtain the PWDT between the onset of each ECG QRS and the foot of the following ABP pulse. The authors found an approximately linear relationship between smoothed PWDT and smoothed systolic (or diastolic) ABP, with no significant correlation between changes in vasoactive drug levels and changes in the relationship (slope or intercept) of PWDT and ABP.