[Pulmonary hemodynamics and cardiac function in severe arterial hypertension]

The central and pulmonary hemodynamics and contractility of the cardiac ventricles were studied using catheterization and cine-angiocardiography in 11 patients with high arterial hypertension and 10 patients with no cardiovascular pathology. Pulmonary hypertension was not recorded in the patients with high arterial hypertension having no clinical symptoms of the heart failure. The pressure in the pulmonary circulation is determined only by the level of the left ventricular end-diastolic pressure, which is moderately elevated in the patients with arterial hypertension due to manifest myocardial hypertrophy. Higher pressure in the pulmonary circulation system in the patients with high arterial hypertension as compared with the control group is explained by the increased left ventricular rigidity due to compensatory hypertrophy. It was shown that diastolic pulmonary arterial pressure reflected left ventricular end-diastolic pressure with sufficient accuracy, exceeding it by an average 2.5 mm Hg. The functional interrelationship has been shown between the cardiac ventricles both in health and in high arterial hypertension.