Relation of Concentric Remodeling to Adverse Outcomes in Patients With Stable Coronary Artery Disease (from the Heart and Soul Study)

Concentric remodeling (CR) is defined as increased left ventricular (LV) wall thickness with normal total LV mass. When encountered in populations with hypertension or patients undergoing aortic valve replacement, some studies have shown that CR predicts cardiovascular (CV) events and stroke. To expand our understanding of the prognostic implications of this common echocardiographic finding, we examined the association of CR and adverse CV events in ambulatory patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). We tested the hypothesis that finding CR on echocardiogram in ambulatory CAD independently predicts heart failure hospitalizations and CV death. Transthoracic echocardiograms were recorded in 973 participants from the Heart and Soul Study. Participants were divided into 4 groups: normal, CR, concentric LV hypertrophy, and eccentric LV hypertrophy. CV events were determined by 2 independent adjudicators and these were analyzed by Cox proportional hazards models. After mean 4.9 ± 1.5 years of follow-up, adverse outcomes occurred more frequently in those with concentric and eccentric LV hypertrophy but not in those with CR. After multivariate adjustment, concentric and eccentric LV hypertrophies were associated with increased risk of death and heart failure hospitalization, whereas CR was not. In conclusion, our hypothesis was not supported because CR was not associated with adverse CV events in our cohort of patients with stable CAD.