Rosa et al Cardiac geometry in essential hypertension Arq Bras Cardiol 2001; 76: 362-8. Hospital do Rim e Hipertensão Mailing address: Eduardo Cantoni Rosa -Hospital do Rim e Hipertensão -Rua Borges Lagoa, 960 -04038-002 -São Paulo, SP, Brazil English version by Stela Maris C. Gandour Purpose -To evaluate 2 left ventricular mass index (LV-MI) normality criteria for the prevalence of left ventricular geometric patterns in a hypertensive population ( HT ) . Methods -544 essential hypertensive

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... ents, were evaluated by echocardiography, and different left ventricular hypertrophy criteria were applied: 1 -classic : men -134 g/m 2 and women -110 g/m 2 ; 2-obtained from the 95 th percentil of LVMI from a normotensive population (NT). Results - The prevalence of 4 left ventricular geometric patterns, respectively for criteria 1 and 2, were: normal geometry -47.7% and 39.3%; concentric remodelying -25.4% and 14.3%; concentric hypertrophy -18.4% and 27.7% and excentric hypertrophy -8.8% and 16.7%, which confered abnormal geometry to 52.6% and 60.7% of hypertensive. The comparative analysis between NT and normal geometry hypertensive group according to criteria 1, detected significative stuctural differences,"( *p < 0.05):LVMI-78.4 ± 1.50 vs 85.9 ±0.95 g/m 2 *; posterior wall thickness -8.5 ± 0.1 vs 8.9 ± 0.05 mm*; left atrium -33.3 ± 0.41 vs 34.7 ± 0.30 mm *. With criteria 2, significative structural differences between the 2 groups were not observed. Conclusion - The use of a reference population based criteria, increased the abnormal left ventricular geometry prevalence in hypertensive patients and seemed more appropriate for left ventricular hypertrophy detection and risk stratification.