Tadic M, et al. – This study was performed on patients with untreated hypertension to determine the link between different hypertensive phenotypes and left atrial (LA) function assessed by the volumetric method and the strain method. Researchers reported that only nighttime hypertension and day–nighttime hypertension were independently related to reduced reservoir and conduit LA function among study participants. Patients with daytime and nighttime hypertension showed disparity in reservoir and conduit LA but not LA pump function.

Methods

• Researchers performed this cross–sectional study including 236 untreated patients who underwent 24–hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring and two–dimensional echocardiographic examination.

Results

• They observed that LA function gradually deteriorated from patients with normotension, across patients with daytime hypertension, to patients with night– and day–nighttime hypertension.
• Findings demonstrated that LA reservoir and conduit functions were specifically impaired in patients with nighttime and day–nighttime hypertension compared with patients with normotension and patients with daytime hypertension, whereas LA pump function was compensatorily increased only in the participants with day–nighttime hypertension.