Reversing Cardiac Hypertrophy in Hypertension

The heart has an inherent capacity to adjust its mass and shape in response to a sustained alteration in workload. Under conditions of heightened demand, myocytes add contractile units (to increase their diameter, length, or both) in a pattern that generally offsets the augmentation of ventricular wall stress (a force per unit area, defined in general terms as the ratio of the product of pressure and radius to wall thickness) that is consequent to an abnormal hemodynamic load. In this respect, the hypertrophic response can be viewed as adaptive, since the remodeled ventricular chamber is capable of maintaining workloads in . . .