[Potential of pulsed Doppler echocardiography in assessing the phasic activity of the left ventricle in patients with symptomatic arterial hypertension].

The phasic structure of heart activity was explored in 50 patients suffering from symptomatic arterial hypertensions before and after the operative treatment with the aid of impulse Doppler echocardiography. Of these, 28 patients had renovascular hypertension (RVH), 16 primary aldosteronism (PA), and 6 pheochromocytoma of the adrenals. The data obtained were compared with the polycardiographic readings in patients with essential hypertension (EH). As in the case of EH, the period of left ventricular tension, the phase of asynchronous and isometric contraction, and the phase of isometric relaxation became significantly longer in patients with RVH and PA. In the postoperative period, some phases of heart activity return to normal whereas other phases remained altered throughout the entire observation period, which may be due to the disease standing and irreversibility of myocardial alterations. Therefore, Doppler echocardiography is a sufficiently accurate method of estimating phasic activity of the left ventricle, allowing computation of the period of cardiac cycle phases even in the presence of only one lead of the ECG mounted into an ultrasonic outfit.