Left Ventricular Hypertrophy and Anti-hypertensive Use in Intracerebral Hemorrhage

Intro: Elevated SBP is common after ICH. Continuous infusions of IV antihypertensive agents are often utilized to quickly correct SBP requiring ICU level care. It is difficult to predict SBP response to these treatments and subsequent medication weaning strategies, as SBP elevation can be the result or etiology of ICH. Identifying patients with a history of uncontrolled hypertension may help tailor SBP treatment. Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) on echocardiogram (echo) is a tool to assess for uncontrolled hypertension. Hypothesis: ICH patients with LVH require longer times of continuous infusions of antihypertensive medications (labetalol/nicardipine) compared to those without LVH. Methods: Admission demographics, medical history, continuous infusions of anti-hypertensives, echo data, ICH characteristics and medical/surgical interventions were prospectively collected for primary-ICH patients between 2009-2015. Patients without admission echo were excluded. LVH presence was evaluated as a binary variable and intergroup differences were evaluated using Mann-Whitney U or Student’s t- test for continuous variables and χ2 or Fisher exact test for categorical variables. Association of LVH presence and total duration of labetalol/nicardipine (in hours) within 72 h of ICU admission was evaluated using linear regression analysis after adjusting for age, race, ICH score and surgical intervention. Results: 370 primary-ICH patients with admission echo were identified. Of these patients, 252 (68%) patients had LVH. ICH patients with LVH were significantly younger (64 vs 69yo), had higher prevalence of pre-morbid hypertension (84 vs 64%), and higher ED and NICU admission SBP (189 vs 174mmHg; 158 vs 147mmHg). No intergroup differences in ICH score, surgical interventions or standing oral anti-hypertensive medication use was seen. Linear regression revealed ICH patients with LVH had longer times on continuous anti-hypertensive infusions compared to those without (20 vs 10h; β=0.11; p=0.04) after adjusting for aforementioned covariates. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that ICH patients with LVH on echo present with elevated SBP that is difficult to control. Early identification of this group may allow for earlier, tailored treatments.