Background: Some antihypertensive drugs are known to increase arterial compliance in hypertensives; how far compliance can be increased is unknown.
Design: We studied eight mildly hypertensive patients to determine how far radial artery compliance can be acutely increased, i.e. the extent of the compliance modulation reserve.
Methods: We evaluated radial artery compliance by a new technique, assessing it throughout the cardiac cycle before and after the intra-arterial infusion of a vasodilator agent (papaverine).
Results: Before papaverine, compliance decreased progressively through diastolic to systolic blood pressure values. This was the case also during the papaverine infusion. However, over the full systolo-diastolic pressure range, compliance was increased by about 40% with papaverine.
Conclusions: In hypertensive subjects radial artery compliance can be markedly increased on a acute basis, indicating that those antihypertensive drugs that improve compliance have a considerable reserve to act upon.