P6.05 Arterial Stiffness and Cardiac Damage Progression are Associated in Essential Hypertension Patients

Abstract

Background

Arterial stiffness and cardiac hypertrophy are independent cardiovascular risk factors. Aim of this study was to describe the relationship between these organ damages in a large cohort of essential hypertensive (EH) treated patients.

Methods

We performed standard trans-thoracic echocardiography to measure anatomical (left ventricular mass indexed by body surface area [LVMI] and relative wall thickness [RWT]) and functional (ejection fraction, diastolic function [E/A] and deceleration time) cardiac parameters on 827 treated EH patients. Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) was used to estimate arterial stiffness. Data were analyzed by linear regressions or ANOVA and post-hoc Bonferroni test.

Results

Patients were 53±14 years old (Mean ± SD)and 50% were male. Their mean blood pressure values were 142.3±18.6/86.7±10.6 mmHg; cardiac structural and functional parameters were in the normal range, PWV was 10.7m/sec. Geometry of left ventricle, as defined by LVMI and RWT (ESC guidelines), was normal in 336 (43%) patients, while in 163 (21%) we found concentric remodelling, concentric hypertrophy in 173 (22%) and eccentric hypertrophy in 109 (14%) patients. PWV was significantly different between the 4 subgroups (p = 0.001), with concentric and eccentric hypertrophy patients having significantly higher PWV values (11.5±2.7 and 11.4±3 m/sec respectively) than patients with normal heart geometry (10.2±2.6m/sec) (p ≤ 0.001 for both).

Conclusions

In EH patients arterial stiffness is associated with the degree of cardiac damage. This may reflect a common pathway leading to these alterations caused by hypertension in different but tightly related organs such as heart and arteries.