Introduction: Patients with left ventricular hyper-trophy are at higher risk of developing microvascular lesions or cerebral macrovascular disease. The presence of cognitive dysfunction in these patients is probably more common.
Objective: The aim of our study was to study the relationship between the presence of echocardiographic left ventricular hypertrophy and cognitive function.
Methods: We performed cognitive function evaluation and transthoracic echocardiography in 216 consecutive hypertensive patients admitted to the Cardiovascular Rehabilitation Clinic. We used the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) test and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MOCA) test to assess cognitive functi-on. We studied the relationship between the presence of echocardiographic left ventricular hypertrophy and cognitive function. Statistical evaluation was made with the Student t test using Microsoft Excel and GraphPad instat software.
Results: The frequency of identified echocardiographic changes was: normal geometry 6%, concentric remo-deling 28.2%, concentric hypertrophy 55.2%, excentric hypertrophy 10.6%. The frequency of detected cogni-tive dysfunction was: MMSE score below 24 points: 20.8%, MOCA score below 26 points: 72.6%. Patients with left ventricular hypertrophy showed significantly lower MOCA score than patients with normal left ventricular mass index (21.2 vs. 23.2, p=0.0054) and lower MMSE score (25.4 vs. 26.4, p=0.51).
Conclusions: Patients with concentric or excentric left ventricular hypertrophy have significantly lower MOCA scores than patients with normal left ventricu-lar mass index. Correct treatment of high blood pre-ssure by preventing left ventricular hypertrophy may help to prevent cognitive dysfunction in hypertensive patients.