CLINICAL AND FUNCTIONAL PARTICULIARITIES OF ARTERIAL STIFFNESS UNDER CONCOMITANT CARDIOPULMONARY PATHOLOGY (REVIEW)

Abstract

At present time chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is considered to be an airway disease with respiratory and systemic manifestations. Cardiovascular diseases have the largest influence on COPD severity among numerous coexisting diseases. These diseases are united together with such pathogenic factors as a sedentary lifestyle, disorder of lipid metabolism and hemostasis, endothelial dysfunction. Tissue hypoxia, oxidative stress, endothelial dysfunction, activation of neurohumoral systems, disorder of water-electrolyte metabolism, and also chronic systemic inflammation are the basic pathogenetic mechanisms of development of the coexisting cardiac pathology of patients with COPD. At the same time the regularities of changing of the clinical picture, peculiarities of a disease course, and also outcomes of COPD in case of comorbidity are still insufficiently studied. Today the main attention is focused on the introduction of noninvasive methods of diagnose of vessels’ elastic properties into clinical practice. Stiffness (rigidity) of the arterial wall studied through the use of the volume sphygmography method is considered to be one of the informative markers of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Pulse wave velocity depends on the stiffness of the vessel wall: the higher the vessel’s stiffness is, the thicker the vessel’s wall is and the smaller its diameter is, then the faster the pulse wave velocity is. An early disease detection of changings of arterial stiffness and metabolic disorders has an important clinic and prognostic value and makes it possible to coordinate therapy timely with the combined cardiopulmonary pathology and avert negative consequences of hemodynamic complications.