Aging of arteries is an important feature of cardiovascular diseases

There are nearly 200 million elderly people in China, about 10% of them suffer from senile diseases and multiple organ damage. One of the specific manifestations of caring for the elderly is to standardize the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases in the elderly. The aging of arteries (arteriosclerosis) can directly lead to microvascular diseases such as simple systolic hypertension, diastolic heart failure, senile dementia and renal failure, which has become the most common and important problem facing clinicians. Although the non atherogenic effect has become a clear part of the "cardiovascular event chain", today's medicine overemphasizes atherothrombosis and ignores the importance of arterial aging. In recent years, people focus on the molecular, genetic, cellular and enzymatic aspects of vascular aging, but ignore the potential mechanical effects and consequences of aging. In fact, the aging problem exists in different blood vessel beds of human body. With the increase of age, the loss of labor force and death, they are independent of atherosclerosis.

According to the needs, the blood is transported from the left ventricle to the capillaries of organs and tissues in the whole body, that is, the function of conduit; buffer the heart beat and maintain the continuity of capillary blood flow , i.e. buffer function. The average pressure from the aorta to the peripheral artery (such as the radial artery) only decreased by about 1 mmHg, while the average pressure from the above mentioned muscular artery to the starting point of the resistance arteriole only slightly increased; pulsating blood flow usually only exists in the larger artery with an internal diameter of & gt; 200 μ m, which will not affect the arteriole and the capillaries at the further end; because pulsating blood flow does not exist in the resistance artery, the systemic vascular system The energy loss caused by the pulsation is very small, only about 10% of the energy loss is caused by the steady propulsion blood flow in arteries, arterioles, capillaries and veins. Another function of the arterial system is that the mean systolic pressure is only 3-4 mmHg higher than that of the whole cardiac cycle, while the mean diastolic pressure is 2-3 mmHg lower.