Background: Arterial stiffness and cardiac hypertrophy are independent cardiovascular risk factors. Aim of this study was to describe the relationship between these organ damages in a large cohort of essential hypertensive (EH) treated patients.

Methods: We performed standard trans-thoracic echocardiography to measure anatomical (left ventricular mass indexed by body surface area [LVMI] and relative wall thickness [RWT]) and functional (ejection fraction, diastolic function [E/A] and deceleration time) cardiac parameters on 827 treated EH patients. Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) was used to estimate arterial stiffness. Data were analyzed by linear regressions or ANOVA and post-hoc Bonferroni test.

Results: Patients were 53±14 years old (Mean ± SD) and 50% were male. Their mean blood pressure values were 142.3±18.6/86.7±10.6 mmHg; cardiac structural and functional parameters were in the normal range, PWV was 10.7 m/sec. Geometry of left ventricle, as defined by LVMI and RWT (ESC guidelines), was normal in 336 (43%) patients, while in 163 (21%) we found concentric remodelling, concentric hypertrophy in 173 (22%) and eccentric hypertrophy in 109 (14%) patients. PWV was significantly different between the 4 subgroups (p = 0.001), with concentric and eccentric hypertrophy patients having significantly higher PWV values (11.5±2.7 and 11.4±3 m/sec respectively) than patients with normal heart geometry (10.2±2.6 m/sec) (p ≤ 0.001 for both).

Conclusions: In EH patients arterial stiffness is associated with the degree of cardiac damage. This may reflect a common pathway leading to these alterations caused by hypertension in different but tightly related organs such as heart and arteries.