Non invasive blood pressure monitoring (tail cuff)
Objectives
Tail cuff is a common and non-invasive method to measure both systolic blood pressure (SBP) and heart rate (HR) in conscious restrained rats. This method allows repeated SBP measurements to evidence the effect of a chronic drug administration with time and in comparison with vehicle treated animals.
Summarized methodology:
Briefly, after training the rat to the tail cuff system, the rat is placed in a restrainer and warmed. A pneumatic pulse sensor is attached to its tail. A cuff is placed around the tail, and slowly inflated above the systolic pressure (figure 1) until it causes pulsations to cease, measured by the piezo-electric pulse sensor. The cuff pressure at which pulsations cease is taken to be the SBP in the tail. HR is determined automatically by counting pulses per unit time (figure 2).
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| Figure 1: Overview of the tail-cuff system set-up. |
Endpoints
- Systolic blood pressure (SBP)
- Heart rate (HR)
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| Figure 2: Principle of SBP recording during cuff inflation. |
Links to applicable Targeted disorders / Pathophysiological models
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