ABSTRACT

Introduction Patients with hypertension who also have left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) constitute a particularly high-risk group who are therefore likely to derive particular benefit from optimal antihypertensive therapy. This strategy of identifying patients in high-risk sub-groups is applied over a series of situations in clinical medicine, with another obvious example being the aggressive treatment of hypercholesterolaemia in patients with coronary heart disease. If there is doubt about the need to treat borderline hypertension then the presence of LVH strengthens the case for treatment. The following issues will be addressed in this chapter.