Technological evolution allowed to record high fidelity traces that--when analysed by complex mathematical systems--may provide extremely detailed and new information about all the factors involved in the determinism of pulse wave. Suprasystolic waves, i.e. those recorded immediately before systolic pressure, may be regarded as similar to aortic pressure waves evaluated during cardiac catheterization. Suprasystolic dP/dt max was calculated from the profile of pulse wave recorded by the DynaPulse, an automatic portable non-invasive oscillometric method to simultaneously measure BP and analyse arterial waveforms, in 10 normal healthy subjects (age 37 +/- 5) and 5 subjects with ischaemic dilatative cardiomyopathy (age 41 +/- 7) whose ejection fraction--invasively assessed--was < 40%. The 24 h dP/dt max curves were analysed by parametric and non parametric tests. We found a significant difference (p < 0.001) in the average 24-h dP/dt max between healthy subjects (471 +/- 36.7 mmHg/sec) and patients with impaired cardiac function (271 +/- 54.2 mmHg/sec). The average daytime and nighttime dP/dt max values showed significantly higher values in normal subject in comparison to patients with heart failure (daytime 7.23 h: 529 +/- 74 mmHg/s versus 227 +/- 64 mmHg/s, p < 0.001; nighttime: 572 +/- 82 mmHg/s versus 202 +/- 67 mmHg/s, p < 0.001). We also found a difference in the occurrence of acrophases, at similar blood pressure value, i.e. the highest dP/dt values occurred during the night in normal subject, the opposite in ischaemic patients. Furthermore, the dP/dt max correlates only with systolic blood pressure.