Editorial Commentary Wave Intensity Analysis and Central Blood Pressure

In this issue of Hypertension, Manisty and colleagues1provide, using wave intensity analysis (WIA), new insight into hemodynamic mechanisms of blood flow and energy transfer in conduit arteries which are relevant to the basic pathophysiology of cardiovascular disease. WIA provides a further computational approach to assessing central arterial function and determinants of central blood pressure (the authors provide a summary of the principles involved in WIA as an online supplement to their article). The reported results are pertinent to 3 important, obviously interrelated, but as yet very incompletely understood issues: 1. A growing, but currently unproven, perception that there may be differences between antihypertensive drug types, or even intragroup differences, in their affect on cardiovascular outcome over and above equivalent ef-fects on clinic (brachial) blood pressure