Effect of age and sex on echocardiographic left ventricular diastolic function parameters in patients with preserved ejection fraction and normal valvular function

Background: We conducted a retrospective study to specify the effect of age and gender on echocardiographic left ventricular diastolic function parameters. Methods: We included echocardiograms done in our institution between 1995 and 2007, for which data on diastolic function were available. In order to target a population as close as possible to healthy subjects, echocardiograms reporting abnormal contraction, valvulopathy or extreme data were excluded. Results: A total of 14,298 patients (mean age 58.53 years; men 49.1%) were included in the study. Sex did not influence E/A ratio (p = 0.298) but age decreased it significantly (p < 0.001). E/e ratio increased significantly with age (p < 0.001) and was higher in women than in men (p < 0.001). After the age of 40, more than 10% of the patients had an E/e ratio superior than 8. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the most imposing study - in terms of number of patients from first to tenth decade of life that were included - addressing the effect of age and gender on diastolic function. Our results stress the need for future prospective trials to establish normal diastolic function parameters according to age and gender, notably for the E/e ratio for which a significant proportion of our population had a ratio superior of what is actually considered normal.