ReviewCardiovascular pressure measurement in safety assessment studies: Technology requirements and potential errors

In the early days of in vivo nonclinical pressure measurement, most laboratories were required to have considerable technical/engineering expertise to configure and maintain pressure transducers, amplifiers, tape recorders, chart recorders, etc. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows typically had some training in the requirements and limitations of the technology they used and were closely engaged in the collection and evaluation of data from their own experiments. More recently, pressure sensing telemetry and data acquisition/analysis systems are provided by vendors as turnkey systems, often resulting in a situation where users are less familiar with the technicalities of their operation. Also, investigators are now more likely to be absent and rely on technical staff for the collection of raw in vivo pressure data from their experiments than in the past. Depending on the goals of an experiment, an investigator may require the measurement of a variety of different pressure parameters, over varying periods of time. A basic understanding of the requirements and limitations that can affect the accuracy and precision of these parameters is important to ensure that the results and conclusions from an experiment are reliable. Factors to consider include the possibility of hydrostatic pressure effects from blood inside the vasculature of the animal, depending on the location of the sensor, as well as from fluid inside a fluid-filled catheter system; long-term stability (lack of drift) of a sensor over time, which can affect the interpretation of absolute pressure changes over a prolonged experiment; frequency response of the sensor and associated electronics; and the phase shift that occurs depending on location of the sensor in the vasculature or because of a fluid-filled catheter system. Each of these factors is discussed, and the particular requirements of frequency response as applied to the measurement of cardiac left ventricular pressure are emphasized. When these factors are understood, a pressure sensing and measurement system can be selected that is optimized for the experimental model being studied, thus eliminating errors or inaccurate results.