Introduction and Background: Resistant Hypertension (HTN) is defined as blood pressure (BP) that remains above goal despite the use of 3 antihypertensive agents from different classes.
Left Ventricular Hypertrophy (LVH) is a common finding in patients with resistant HTN. LVH is associated with worse clinical outcomes.
Catheter based radiofrequency ablation of the renal sympathetic nerves (or renal denervation- RDN) has been shown to lower the BP in patients with resistant HTN. However, there is only limited data on whether RDN improves LVH.
Aim: To evaluate the efficacy of RDN on LVH reduction in patients with resistant HTN at 12 months after the procedure.
Methods: We analyzed prospectively collected data on 22 patients with resistant HTN who underwent RDN between 7/2011 and 2/2013 in the department of cardiology in Bnai Zion Medical Center. Our primary end points were mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure, mean interventricular septum (IVS) thickness and left ventricular mass (LV mass) at 12 months after the procedure. Our secondary end point was correlation between blood pressure response and interventricular thickness and LV mass at 12 months after the procedure.
Statistics: mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure was analyzed by Repeated Measures Test. IVS thickness and LV mass were analyzed by t-test. Correlation between systolic and diastolic blood pressure and IVS thickness and LV mass was analyzed by Pearson test.
Results: There was significant reduction in mean systolic and mean diastolic blood pressure 12 months after the RDN procedure.
There was significant reduction in mean IVS thickness at 12 months after the procedure (1.42 vs. 1.48 at baseline, p0.05). There was no significant reduction in LV mass 12 months after the procedure.
There was positive correlation between systolic blood pressure reduction and LV mass reduction.
Summary: Our study demonstrated reduction in mean systolic and diastolic BP and in mean IVS thickness 12 months after RDN procedure. Moreover, we found positive correlation between systolic blood pressure response and LV mass reduction.
