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Updated: Jul 11, 2026

Murine Echocardiography of Left Atrium, Aorta, and Pulmonary Artery
Published on: February 20, 2017
Electrocardiographic left ventricular hypertrophy has low diagnostic accuracy in middle-aged subjects
Pasi Vottonen1, Minna Husso, Petri Sipola
1Department of Internal Medicine, Kuopio University Hospital and University of Kuopio, Kuopio, Finland.
Objective:
To evaluate the usefulness of electrocardiographic left ventricular hypertrophy (ECG LVH) as a marker of LVH in middle-aged subjects.
Methods:
LVH was determined by cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in 188 apparently healthy middle-aged [97 men (45+/-7 years) and 91 women (47+/-6 years)]. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, test sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values for identifying LVH at different ECG criteria were calculated.
Results:
Systolic and diastolic blood pressures were 142+/-13 mmHg and 90+/-8 mmHg in men and 139+/-10 mmHg and 90+/-8 mmHg in women, respectively. LVMI was 78+/-17 g/m2 in men and 67+/-12 g/m2 in women, and 14% of men and 22% of women had LVH in cardiac MRI. Only Sokolow-Lyon and Sokolow-Lyon product had the area under the ROC curve over 0.70. Sokolow-Lyon product had the highest sensitivity (47%). All ECG criteria had high negative predictive values, but the positive predictive values were below 46%.
Conclusions:
Commonly used ECG criteria of LVH have low discrimination ability in middle-aged subjects. ECG LVH alone should not be used as a marker of target organ damage in middle-aged, never treated and apparently healthy hypertensives.
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