Cardiac Abnormalities in Patients with End-Stage Chronic Kidney Disease

Abstract

Cardiac involvement is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in patients undergoing chronic hemodialysis. Therefore, echocardiography is the preferred diagnostic test. Our study aims to describe the different cardiac lesions observed on transthoracic echocardiography and identify the associated risk factors. This was a single-center cross-sectional study that included adult patients who had been on hemodialysis for over a year and had undergone transthoracic echocardiography at the Casablanca University Hospital during 2021. Our descriptive and analytical study focused on analyzing demographic, clinical, biological, and echocardiographic data. We collected data from 65 hemodialysis patients, including 33 men (50.7%) and 32 women (49.3%), resulting in a male-to-female ratio of 1.02. The average age of the patients was 45.45 years ± 14.29 [18.82]. The average duration of hemodialysis treatment was 15.65 ± 9.445 years [1.34]. Among the patients, 47.7% were hypertensive (n=31), 58.5% were anemic (n=38), and 46.2% had hyperparathyroidism (n=30). The echocardiographic findings revealed that the most common abnormalities were left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), observed in 67.7% of patients (n=44), and valvulopathies, observed in 66.2% (n=43) of patients. Valvular calcifications were noted in 12.3% of cases (n=8), pericarditis in 6.2% of cases (n=4), and left ventricular dilatation in 3.1% (n=2) of cases. Echocardiography remains the preferred examination due to its non-invasive nature, enabling accurate diagnosis of cardiac abnormalities and assessment of cardiovascular risk.