Modern Diagnostic Approach for the Assessment of Cardiac Damage in Hypertension: 3D, CT and MRI

Abstract

Hypertension (HTN) is a leading cause of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Asymptomatic organ disease (OD) is crucial in determining the cardiovascular (CV) risk of hypertensive individuals, and the signifi cance of OD in determining calculation of overall risk depends on how carefully the damage is assessed, based on available facilities.Echocardiography represents a signifi cant clinical tool in determining cardiac structural and functional changes. Although it has some technical limitations, it represent the gold standard in the assessment of cardiac function and structure. Hypertension is associated with alterations in cardiac structure and function such as left ventricular hypertrophy as well as alterations in left ventricular fi lling and relaxation [ 1 , 2 ]. Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) can predict CV mortality independently of SCORE stratifi cation, and this obviates the need of using echocardiographic assessment of hypertensive patients in daily clinical practice [ 3 -5 ]. Left Ventricular Systolic FunctionA sine qua non in the assessment of left ventricular function is the estimation of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). Traditional measurement of LVEF by two-dimensional (2D) echocardiography using Simpson's biplane technique relies on optimal visualization of the endocardial border. Additional limitations of 2D imaging include:• The 'missing third dimension' that has been considered the main source of the relatively wide interobserver variability of 2D diameters and volumes