Asian Heart Study: Aortic Root Diameter Is Key Indicator

In the ongoing search for subclinical markers of heart disease, Taiwan researchers found that the diameter of the aortic root is a useful predictor.

In a study of diastolic function in asymptomatic Asians, researchers determined that aortic root enlargement is a sign of increased cardiovascular risk.

Reporting at the European Society of Cardiology’s ESC Congress 2016, Lawrence Yu-Min Liu and colleagues at Mackay Memorial Hospital Hsinchu, in Hsinchu, Taiwan and elsewhere found that it pays to look at the aortic root.

They studied 7,964 Asian subjects with a mean age of 50, 39% women. All had an annual cardiovascular survey.

They looked at conventional cardiac structures, including aortic root diameter and functional measures.

Their goal was to see whether that root diameter is useful in predicting diastolic dysfunction in patients with no heart disease symptoms.

They found that men had a significantly larger diameter than women, and that this diameter was associated with increased left ventricular mass, lower mitral inflow ratio, reduced mitral annular relaxation, early diastolic mitral inflow and early mitral annular relaxation velocity.

“Our data suggested a common pathological process between aortic root remodeling and subclinical myocardial damage,” the team concluded.