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A new drug is thought to have profound cardiovascular effects. Discuss how you would assess its effe
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A new drug is thought to have profound cardiovascular effects. Discuss how you would assess its effe The least invasive method of measuring arterial blood pressure is to use a sphygmomanometer. This is a pneumatic device for measuring the arterial pressure indirectly by allowing a controlled occlusion of the underlying artery. However, the results obtained by this measurement are discontinuous and so if the drug had a rapid onset and/or short duration of action the technique might miss the drug's effects altogether, or miss its peak action. It is far better to use a continuous technique such as the insertion of a cannula, attached to a strain gauge manometer, into an artery. The strain gauge manometer uses a membrane of very small mass, which avoids the problem of inertia found in U-tube manometers. When the membrane is displaced an electrical signal is produced proportional to the blood pressure. The advantage of...
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