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Clinical background
PTT is defined as the time that takes a pulse wave to travel between the aortic valve to the periphery. The speed of this wave is directly proportional to the inverse of the systolic blood pressure. Thus a slight increase in blood pressure causes an increase in vascular tone, which in turn stiffens the arterial wall causing the PTT to shorten; that is represented as a transient dip in the baseline of the PTT signal. In increase of PTT reflects an increase in respiratory effort. Therefore, PTT is a sensitive tool for measuring the transient changes in the autonomic tone. For practical reasons, the opening of the aortic valve is assimilated to the R-wave on the ECG.
