Background: Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is the response of myocytes to various stimuli leading to myocytes' hypertrophy, which occurs as a compensatory response to increased after-load. It is defined as an increase in LV mass assessed by postmortem measurements, electrocardiographic (ECG), echocardiographic and cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) criteria.
Objective: To investigate the reproducibility of different echocardiographic modalities in the assessment of LVH in hypertensive patients and patients with type II DM in comparison to the golden standard CMR measurements.
Patients and Methods: We prospectively investigated 40 patients with LVH, 20 patients being hypertensive and diabetic, 20 patients being diabetic only and 20 healthy control subjects (normal ventricular function and ECG and no cardiac risk factors). In addition to clinical and conventional echocardiographic parameters, LV mass and volumes were analyzed.
Results: The comparison between new echocardiographic techniques and CMR showed that the assessments of LV volumes/LVEF by echocardiography and CMR have good correlations. However, the inter-technique agreement of absolute LV volumes revealed considerable differences, with significant underestimation of volumes and LVEF with respect to CMR. The LV mass was less in patients assessed by different algorithms of 2D echo rather than 3D echo and CMR, correlated positively with EDV and ESV.
Conclusion: 3D echocardiography attains more solid results in patients diagnosed having LVH by 2D echocardiography. CMR would be preferable for research and specific clinical conditions requiring higher accuracy and reproducibility.