Aortic wall elasticity and left ventricular function in hypertensive patients with nonsignificant coronary artery disease.

Purpose: Hypertension is an important cause of nonischemic heart failure. It is important to identify subclinical left ventricular dysfunction in patients with hypertension in an early stage to lower the risk of progression to more severe illness. The aim of our study was to assess the correlation between indices of left ventricular function and aortic stiffness in patients with hypertension.

Methods: Our study was a case control study of 42 hypertensive and 40 normotensive patients with nonsignificant coronary artery disease. All the patients underwent echocardiography and left ventricular ejection fraction, global longitudinal strain, post systolic index, pulsed Doppler early transmitral peak flow velocity, early diastolic mitral annular velocity (e'), and aortic elasticity measurements were calculated.

Results: The hypertensive patients were older (58.47 ± 9.57 vs. 52.94 ± 10.38 years,  = 0.018) and had a higher body mass index (30.09 ± 5.08 vs. 27.48 ± 4.17 kg/m,  = 0.013) and E/e' ratio (8.16 ± 1.81 vs. 6.56 ± 1.71,  < 0.001) and a lower e' velocity (8.25 ± 2.28 vs. 9.52 ± 2.34 cm/s,  = 0.015) than normotensives. They also had a lower aortic distensibility ( = 0.008) and a higher aortic stiffness index ( = 0.039) compared with the normotensive group. The hypertensive patients did not show any association between aortic elasticity and stiffness with age or e' velocity despite significant association in normotensives.

Conclusion: Hypertension is associated with a high prevalence of diastolic dysfunction, elevated left ventricular filling pressure, and increased arterial stiffness, all of which have significant association with adverse outcomes. The measurements found in the hypertensive patients compared with the normotensive group may be due to several age-independent mechanisms.