[Visceral Obesity as Risk Factor of Early Vascular Aging]

to analyze dependence of parameters of vascular remodeling on the presence of visceral obesity (VO) assessed by echocardiographic measurement of epicardial fat thickness (EFT).

We examined 163 asymptomatic normotensive patients (74.8% men, mean age 45.0+/-5.4 years) with low or moderate risk on the SCORE). Examination included echocardiography, triplex ultrasound of brachiocephalic arteries, bifunctional 24-hour blood pressure (BP) monitoring with assessment of arterial stiffness. VO was diagnosed at EFT more or equal 75 percentile which was 4.8 and 3.5, 5.8 and 4.4 mm among patients aged 31-45 and 46-55 years with and without abdominal obesity (AO), respectively.

Patients with VO more often had pulse wave velocity (PWV) in the aorta which corresponded to criteria of early vascular aging.