RESUMO
The echocardiographic features of the left ventricle of 37 obese women (body mass index above 30) and 37 lean controls, matched for sex, age, height and blood pressure levels, were studied. Twenty-six patients in each group were hypertensive. The normotensive obese patients did not show any differences, comparing to the normotensive controls; on the contrary, the hypertensive obese patients had higher left ventricular mass (LVM), stroke volume and cardiac output (CO), and lower total peripheral resistance (TPR) than the hypertensive controls. A positive correlation was found between the LVM and the CO (r = 0.57, P less than 0.01) in hypertensive obese patients, and between the relative wall thickenss (h/r, that is the ratio between the left ventricular wall thickness and the left ventricular radius) and TPR (r = 0.64, P less than 0.01) in the hypertensive controls. It is concluded that obesity per se does not determine left ventricular hypertrophy in women; however, when obesity is associated with arterial hypertension, a distinct pattern of hypertrophy, characterized by high CO and low TPR, develops.