Heart weight, Left Ventricular Wall Thickness, and Interventricular Septum Thickness in Cardiac and Moncardiac Causes of Deaths: A Cross-sectional Postmortem Study in Babylon Province

Abstract

Background The heart weight and left ventricular (LV) mass reflect on the severity of coronary artery diseases. In clinical practice, it can help physicians decide whether to perform invasive cardiac catheterization to visualize the extent of the coronary block. Material and methods this study is a cross sectional postmortem study included 80 cases, for which a full autopsies were performed, and included measurement of heart weight, left ventricle posterior wall thickness, and interventricular septum thickness. The measurement was statistically analyzed and correlated to age sex and cardiovascular diseases. Results; the result of this study has revealed a strong positive correlation between age and heart weight; Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). By using student (t) test, the difference between the means weight of heart in males and females is highly significant: P < 0.05. P = 0.004. The same result were obtained for the LVPW thickness and IVS thickness; the difference in mean LVPW thickness and IVS thickness between male and female is highly significant P < 0.05. There is a strong positive correlation between heart weight and cardiac diseases as well as the LVPW and IVS thickness and cardiovascular diseases. Conclusion there is a highly significant positive correlation between age and sex, on one hand, and interventricular septal thickness, left ventricular posterior wall thickness and heart weight on the other hand, and, therefore, age and sex should be considered in order to assess the significance of these measurements in clinical practice. Cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension and coronary artery disease are associated with increased heart weight and increased left ventricular wall thickness and interventricular septum thickness