Engineering Commons^™

Persistent Vascular Collagen Accumulation Alters Hemodynamic Recovery From Chronic Hypoxia, Diana M. Tabima, Alejandro Roldan-Alzate, Zhijie Wang, Timothy A. Hacker, Robert C. Molthen, Naomi C. Chesler

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is caused by narrowing and stiffening of the pulmonary arteries that increase pulmonary vascular impedance (PVZ). In particular, small arteries narrow and large arteries stiffen. Large pulmonary artery (PA) stiffness is the best current predictor of mortality from PAH. We have previously shown that collagen accumulation leads to extralobar PA stiffening at high strain (Ooi et al. 2010). We hypothesized that collagen accumulation would increase PVZ, including total pulmonary vascular resistance (Z₀), characteristic impedance (Z_C), pulse wave velocity (PWV) and index of global wave reflections (P_b/P …