Background: Age is known to be associated with the prevalence and pathophysiology of hypertension. However, there is little information on whether age stands as a good proxy for the specific hemodynamic profile of an individual with elevated blood pressure (BP), which could be important in the selection of therapy.
Design: This is a cross-sectional study.
Setting: People who underwent a noninvasive, hemodynamic assessment using impedance cardiography at 51 sites of iKang Health Checkup Centers throughout China between January 2012 and October 2018.
Participants: We included 116,851 individuals, aged 20 to 80 years.
Main outcomes and measures: Relationship between age and hemodynamic parameters (cardiac index, systemic vascular resistance index [SVRI]), among individuals with elevated BP (systolic BP ≥130 mm Hg or diastolic BP ≥80 mm Hg).
Results: Final study population included 45,082 individuals with elevated BP: 29,194 men and 15,888 women with a mean (±SD) age of 48 (±13) and 54 (±12) years, respectively. Cardiac index was negatively associated with age with an adjusted, per decade decrease of 0.17 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.17-0.18) L/min/m2 in men and 0.24 (95% CI = 0.23-0.25) L/min/m2 in women. SVRI was positively associated with age with an adjusted, per-decade increase of 174.2 (95% CI = 168.8-179.7) dynes·s·cm-5 ·m2 in men and 214.1 (95% CI = 204.3-223.8) dynes·s·cm-5 ·m2 in women. However, there was substantial overlap in the distribution of these parameters across different age groups in both sexes.
Conclusions: In this large study, we observed that cardiac index decreased and SVRI increased with age among individuals with elevated BP. Even though there was a general trend with age, we observed heterogeneity within age strata, suggesting that age alone is inadequate to indicate the hemodynamic profile for an individual. J Am Geriatr Soc 68:1520-1528, 2020.
Keywords: age; cardiac index; hemodynamic; hypertension; systemic vascular resistance index.
© 2020 The American Geriatrics Society.