Well, hello there. I'm Nurse Mo and welcome to Mo's Monday Minute, a shorty episode of the

Straight A Nursing podcast where I share a quick tip you can start using to improve your practice

or habits right away. For more in-depth topics, check out the episodes that I release on Thursdays.

So in this shorty episode, we're talking about pulse pressure. So before we dive into it,

let's do a very quick little review. So pulse pressure is a

culmination of two components, systolic and diastolic pressure. So systolic pressure is the

max pressure in the vessel when the heart contracts. And then the diastolic pressure is the minimum

pressure in the vessel when the heart is relaxed.

And pulse pressure is the difference between systolic and diastolic pressure.

So if the systolic pressure is, let's say, 120 and the diastolic pressure is 80, then pulse pressure is 40. And when pulse pressure is at about

25% of systolic pressure, it is considered narrowed. It can also be wider. When it's greater than

100, it's definitely considered quite wide. And there are quite a few

instances and situations in the clinical setting where a widening and wide pulse pressure

correlate with the pathophysiology of the patient. So one of the things, though, to take into consideration is that pulse pressure can widen based on age.

So your older patients may have a wider pulse pressure.

And this is simply because of decreased compliance of the arteries.

Now, it can also be wide in endurance athletes because as their cardiovascular

fitness increases from all those workouts, cardiac output and stroke volume increase,

but diastolic pressure decreases because of the decrease in total peripheral resistance.

This is secondary to the accumulation of slow twitch muscle fibers in the arterials

versus fast twitch muscle fibers.

So they have a lower diastolic pressure.

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