Comparison of beat-to-beat blood pressure and pulse-wave-latency during valsalva manoeuvre for the evaluation of autonomic function

Impairment of the autonomic nervous system is common in neurological diseases. Various tests to quantify autonomic dysfunction have been implemented, one is the Valsalva manoeuvre (VM). It consists of four phases. Phase 2 and Phase 4 are thought to reflect autonomic function. Since phase 2 is variable on a time basis, we focussed on phase 4, the blood pressure overshoot after VM. The aim of our study was to compare different methods of blood pressure estimation during VM. We used the direct beat-to-beat blood pressure recording (Finapres®) as the standard method and compared the results to the calculation of the…