Why the study?
Does measurement of wall thickness alone accurately assess the presence of left ventricular hypertrophy compared to indexed LV mass in hypertensive patients?
Does measurement of wall thickness alone accurately assess the presence of left ventricular hypertrophy compared to indexed LV mass in hypertensive patients?
Measurement of wall thickness alone is an inaccurate surrogate for indexed LV mass in assessing left ventricular hypertrophy, as it overestimates LVH in males and underestimates it in females.
Wall thickness alone risks sex-specific LVH misclassification in hypertension; leaves open optimal diagnostic thresholds versus indexed mass.
Clinical echocardiographic assessment of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is generally performed by measuring wall thickness alone (WT). The objective of this study was to compare the assessment of LVH using the measurement of WT to that using indexed LV mass. Hypertensive patients underwent echocardiography with the measurement of LV WT and LV mass. For each patient, the presence of LVH was assessed by both methods with WT compared to the gold standard of LV mass index. In all, 92 patients (51M/41F) were entered, and in only 55 patients (60%) were the two methods concordant. There was a tendency for WT to underestimate LVH in females (sensitivity 37%, specificity 79%) and overestimate LVH in males (sensitivity 88%, specificity 56%). The measurement of WT alone overestimates LVH in males and underestimates LVH in females and should not be used as a surrogate marker for increased LV mass.
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Leibowitz et al. (2007) studied this question.