Arterial dynamics: a comment on arterial wave reflections

Abstract

We have been privileged to hear the thorough general discussion of arterial dynamics by Dr. Michael O’Rourke. Whereas this field lends itself to many areas of intensive investigation, I will limit my comments to that of arterial wave reflections and modeling the systemic arterial tree. Since the early part of this century when Hamilton and Dow [1] proposed the presence of standing waves in the aorta, numerous studies have been performed to investigate the phenomenon of reflections in the systemic circulation with attempts to hypothesize simplified models of the reflective systemic circulation [2–5]. Much of this previous work has focused on determining the site(s) of origin of reflections.