Purpose: To analyze the association between black people and left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) in the absence of hypertension and/or other cardiopulmonar disease.
Methods: Data were collected from necropsies carried out in the Anatomopathologic Service (APS). Hospital Edgard Santos from 1970 to 1986, Salvador. It were included only subjects at ages > or = 20 years and free of hypertension and any cardiopulmonar disease. A LV wall > 1.6cm was considered as LVH (standardized criteria of the APS). Controls variables were age, sex, and absence of the mentioned diseases. It was used a case-control epidemiological study design and the association measured by "odds ratio" (OR) for no matched case-control study.
Results: From the 208 subjects studied, 48 (23.1%) had LVH. There was no difference in the frequency of right ventricular hypertrophy between cases and controls (p > 0.05). The mean of heart weight was higher for LVH cases (p < 0.001), but there was no evidence of association between blacks and LVH (OR = 1.05, p > 0.05 and confidence interval at 95% = 0.8, 1.31. The highest odds possible for the association in this study (assuming that all 3 LVH losses were black subjects) would be 1.5, also no statistically significant.
Conclusion: In the absence of hypertension and other cardiopulmonar diseases, LHV is common in necropsies in Salvador, Brazil, with similar frequencies in blacks, whites and mullatos and seems not be a risk factor for hypertension in black people.