Abstrakt
Arteries in vivo undergo significant longitudinal pretension which helps to optimize their mechanical function. This pretension is changed within the life and is involved in remodeling and adaptation processes.
There is, however, surprisingly small number of papers reporting systematic statistics of the age-related distribution of the longitudinal prestrain in human arteries. This study was designed to fill this gap.
Statistics of the longitudinal prestrain were gained within the autopsy measurements of abdominal aortic segments' retraction. The study involved 18 female (51 male) subjects aged 41.6+-15.3 (37.3+-14.1) years, who gave the prestrain 0.16+-0.1 (0.19+-0.1); mean +-SD.
The observation proved that the longitudinal prestrain decreases significantly with increased age. The linear correlation coefficient was R=-0.866 in female group (R=-0.832 male).
The linear equation was employed as the regression model and the prediction intervals were also computed. It was concluded that, despite rather small number of observations, the age is a suitable predictor of the longitudinal prestrain in human abdominal aorta