Electrocardiographic left ventricular hypertrophy and mortality in an oldest-old hypertensive Chinese population

Abstract

Purpose

Previous studies have identified that electrocardiographic pattern of left ventricular hypertrophy (ECG LVH) is associated with mortality, but studies of its correlation in the oldest-old hypertensive population is extremely limited. We investigated the correlation between ECG LVH and mortality in a hypertensive Chinese population aged 80 years and older.

Patients and methods

In this study, we included 284 Chinese participants older than 80 years. All included participants with hypertension (sitting systolic blood pressure [BP] 160 to 200 mmHg; sitting diastolic BP <110 mmHg) were ascertained at the baseline. ECG LVH was defined as a Sokolow-Lyon voltage calculated as the amplitude of SV1+ (max RV5 or RV6) greater than 3.5 mV. We categorized participants into two groups by the status of baseline ECG LVH. We used Cox regression models to calculate hazard ratio (HRs) for mortality due to ECG LVH, including cardiovascular mortality and all-cause mortality.

Results

In this study, with a 28-month median follow-up, a total of 35 (12.3%) patients died; 21 of those died due to cardiovascular causes. Compared with participants without ECG LVH, there was an increased risk of cardiovascular mortality in participants with ECG LVH (adjusted HR 4.25 [95% confidence interval [CI], 1.50–12.06]) but ECG LVH did not predict all-cause mortality (adjusted HR 2.31 [95% CI, 0.93–5.72]).

Conclusion

Our study shows that ECG LVH predicts the risk of cardiovascular mortality in an oldest-old hypertensive Chinese population.

Keywords:

• left ventricular hypertrophy
• mortality
• oldest-old
• hypertension
• China

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by Grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81771938, 91846101, and 81301296), from Peking University (Grant Nos. BMU2018MX020 and PKU2017LCX05), the National Key Technology R&D Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (2016YFC1305400), and the University of Michigan Health System-Peking University Health Science Center Joint Institute for Translational and Clinical Research (BMU20160466, BMU2018JI012, and BMU2019JI005).

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.