Risk assessment of echocardiographic left ventricular hypertrophy with electrocardiography, body mass index and blood pressure.

Aims: Electrocardiography (ECG) has a high specificity but unfortunately low sensitivity to detect anatomic left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). In this study, ECG amplitude and products were examined as continuous variables together with blood pressure (BP) and body mass index (BMI) to find out a simple method to predict echocardiographic (ECHO)-LVH. An age- and gender-stratified population-based sample of men (n = 121) and women (n = 135) aged 35-64 years enriched with newly diagnosed untreated hypertensive men (n = 138) and women (n = 97) in the Turku area in south-western Finland was studied.