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T. Weber, S. Wassertheurer, B. Hametner, A. Herbert, P. Boutouyrie, S. Laurent, J. K. Cruickshank:
"Reference Values for Central Blood Pressure";
Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 63 (2014), 21; 2299 - 2300.

We recently read with great interest the study in the Journal
by Cheng et al. (1) on central (aortic) arterial blood pressure
thresholds. We highly appreciate the ongoing work of our colleagues
in this research field and agree that the establishment
of event-based cutoff values for central systolic pressures is an
important step forward. In addition, we acknowledge the difficulties
getting there. Studying this impressive piece of work, we
noticed that the calibration procedures for deriving central
pressure differed between the derivation and validation groups. In
particular, brachial mean and diastolic pressures versus brachial
systolic and diastolic pressures were applied for calibration in the
derivation and validation groups, respectively. This approach is
susceptible to biased estimation of central blood pressure. Indeed,
several research groups showed independently that these 2
methods of calibration may lead to absolute differences in central
systolic pressure estimation of up to 15 mm Hg against each other
and compared with catheter measurements (2-4), independent of
measurement device and method. This has to be added to difficulties
in estimating the "true" mean blood pressure; either using
integrated brachial waveforms, readings from the oscillometric
device, or simple 0.33 or 0.4 formulas.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2013.12.046