Background: Findings regarding the association between Cardio-Ankle Vascular Index (CAVI) and cardiac hypertension-mediated organ damage (HMOD), such as left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) assessed by echocardiography, in elderly hypertensive patients are scanty. We sought to investigate this issue in the hypertensive fraction of the general population treated with anti-hypertensive drugs enrolled in the Pressioni Monitorate E Loro Associazioni (PAMELA) study.
Methods: The study included 239 out of 562 participants who attended the second and third survey of the PAMELA study performed after 10 and 25 years from the initial evaluation. Data collection included medical history, anthropometric parameters, office, home, ambulatory blood pressure (BP),blood examinations, echocardiography and CAVI measurements.
Results: In the whole study sample (age 69+9 years, 54% males), CAVI was positively correlated with age, office, home, ambulatory systolic BP, LV mass (LVM) index and negatively associated with body mass index (BMI). In multivariate analysis, CAVI was associated with LVM index (p< 0.05) independently of major confounders. The participants with LVH exhibited significantly higher CAVI (10.6+2.8 vs 9.2+1.8 m/sec. P<0.001), larger left atrial diameter and lower LV ejection fraction values than their counterparts without it. The CAVI value of 9.4 m/sec was the best cut-off for prediction of LVH in the whole sample.
Conclusions: Our study provides new evidence of an independent association between CAVI and LVH in treated elderly hypertensive patients and suggests that the use of this metric of arterial stiffness could not only be used to evaluate vascular damage but also to stratify the risk of LVH.
Keywords: CAVI; echocardiography; hypertension; left ventricular hypertrophy; vascular damage.
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