Background and Objective Inter-arm blood pressure difference (IAD) indicates artery disease of arm. This study was to investigate whether the transradial coronary intervention (TRI) increases the prevalence of IAD.

Methods This study enrolled 154 adult in-patients underwent the first selective TRI, and without radial artery occlusion (RAO) by palpation method after TRI. Bilateral brachial and radial artery BPs were simultaneously measured using two automatic BP measurement devices in the day before (BP0) and one day (BP1d), 7 day (BP7d), 3 month (BP3m) and 6 month (BP6m) after TRI. The difference of the left and right BPs was calculated as the ΔBP l-r and the absolute value of ΔBP l-r equal to or over 10mmHg was recognised as IAD.

Results The bilateral brachial and radial SBP0 and DBP0 were similar. The brachial BP1d and BP7d of the catheterized right arm decreased significantly and were significantly lower than those of left arm. At the same time, the rates of sIAD on brachial artery were higher than the baseline (27.3% and 13.0% vs 7.1%, both P < 0.05). Even the brachial artery BP6m was similar to BP0, but sIAD on brachial artery was higher somewhat than baseline (9.1%). Similar results were seen in the bilateral radial artery BP and IAD also.

Conclusions TRI can induce BP decrease in the catheterized arm and increase the prevalence of systolic IAD for at least 7 days in both brachial or radial artery sites.