Imaging of Left Ventricular Hypertrophy: a Practical Utility for Differential Diagnosis and Assessment of Disease Severity.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is often encountered in clinical practice, and it is a risk factor for cardiac mortality and morbidity. Determination of the etiology and disease severity is important for the management of patients with LVH. The aim of this review is to show the remarkable progress in cardiac imaging and its importance in clinical practice.

RECENT FINDINGS

This review focuses on clinical features and characteristic cardiac imaging in LVH caused by various diseases including hypertension, aortic valve stenosis, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and secondary cardiomyopathies. The usefulness of echocardiography as a tool of general versatility including hemodynamic evaluation and the usefulness of cardiac magnetic resonance imaging for assessment of cardiac morphology and myocardial tissue characteristics of relevance for LVH are described. Imaging modalities now have central roles in the differentiation and prognostic assessment of LVH.