A new index of" cardiac age" derived from echocardiography : A study for brain-cardio-renal connection and organ damages of hypertension.

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Although pulse wave velocity is the primary indicator of arteriosclerosis and is widely used as an index of vascular age in anti-aging medicine, no index is available to quantify cardiac age. We proposed a" cardiac age" index and sought to clarify its clinical significance. Enrolled in the study were patients with atherosclerosis-related diseases. These patients were divided into normotensive and hypertensive patients. Echocardiography was performed, and brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity(baPWV) was measured using an automatic waveform analyzer. The index of cardiac age was determined as 1000×VSot/ BSA/(VS-AO), where VSot(mm) was the ventricular septal thickness at the left ventricular outflow tract, BSA(m^2) was the body surface area, and VS-AO(degrees) was the angle between the basal ventricular septum and the ascending aorta. The index of cardiac aging correlated significantly with age in both the normotensive and hypertensive patients, and these correlations were closer than those between transmitral E/ A(early to atrial velocity) ratio and age in normotensive and hypertensive patients. The slope between age(x axis) and the index of cardiac age(y axis) was greater in hypertensive(1. 50) than normotensive(1. 32) patients. Stepwise regression analysis showed that age, the presence of hypertension, the left ventricular mass index, the left ventricular end-diastolic dimension, the dimension of left atrium, and the ratio of E to A(E/ A) were independently associated with the index of cardiac age. The index was also significantly correlated with baPWV. The proposed index of cardiac age can quantitatively assess cardiac morphological changes due to aging and/ or hypertension and may be a useful marker of peripheral arterial stiffening.