Echocardiographic Findings and Associated Factors in HIV Infected Patients at a Tertiary Hospital in Ethiopia

Background: Non-communicable diseases including cardiovascular diseases are becoming an important part of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) care. Echocardiography is a useful non-invasive tool to assess for cardiac disease and different echocardiographic abnormalities have been seen previously. Available evidence on the echocardiographic abnormalities in Ethiopia is scarce. The aim of this study was to investigate the echocardiographic abnormalities in HIV infected patients and factors associated with the findings.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 285 patients with HIV infection including collection of clinical and echocardiographic data. Logistic regression was used to examine the association between echocardiographic abnormalities and associated factors with variables with a p-value of < 0.05 in the multivariate model considered statistically significant.Results: Diastolic dysfunction was the most common abnormality seen in 30.1% of the participants followed by regional wall motion abnormality (22.2%), left ventricular hypertrophy (10.3%), enlarged left atrium (8.1%), pulmonary hypertension (3.5%) and pericardial effusion (2.1%). Almost all patients had normal left ventricle systolic function. Diastolic dysfunction was independently associated with increasing age, elevated blood pressure and left ventricular hypertrophy while regional wall motion abnormality was associated with male gender, increasing age and abnormal fasting blood glucose. Left ventricular hypertrophy was associated with increasing age and blood pressure and the later was associated with left atrial enlargement. The level of immunosuppression did not affect echocardiography findings. Conclusions: A high prevalence of echocardiographic abnormalities was found and included diastolic dysfunction, regional wall motion abnormality, left ventricular hypertrophy and left atrial enlargement. Male gender, age above 50 years, elevated blood pressure and elevated fasting blood glucose were associated with echocardiographic abnormalities. Appropriate screening and treatment of echocardiographic abnormalities is needed.