engleski

Hypertensive Heart Disease: Morphological and Functional Echocardiographic Study

A group of 511 hypertensive patients and 54 control subjects were examined by 2-D, M-mode and Doppler echocardiography. Left ventricular morphologic and functional indices, left atrial dimensions and degenerative valvular changes were analyzed in respect to the severity, duration and aetiology of hypertension, age of the patient and clinical data. The pattern of basic hypertrophy in our group of hypertensive patients was concentric left ventricular hypertrophy with preserved contractility and impaired diastolic filling. Eccentric and asymetric hypertrophy were less frequent and probably more characteristic for certain subgroups of patients. The degree of left ventricular hypertrophy was clearly related to severity of hypertension. The relation of age was not so marked, while the dependence on duration of hypertension was hardly evident. The impairment of left ventricular diastolic filling was a dominant functional disturbance in our hypertensive patients. It was related not only to the left ventricular mass, severity of arterial hypertension and the patient-s age, but also to the duration of hypertension. The patients with renal aetiology of hypertension, most of them with chronic renal failure, were prone to a combination of concentric and eccentric left ventricular hypertrophy and to increased cardiac output. Degenerative changes of aortic and mitral valvular apparatus were frequent in elderly hypertensives, but were not related to the severity of hypertension.

hypertensive heart disease; echocardiography

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