The relationship between nighttime hypertension and left atrial function

The authors sought to investigate the association between different hypertensive phenotypes and left atrial (LA) function assessed by the volumetric method and the strain method in patients with untreated hypertension. This cross-sectional study involved 236 untreated patients who underwent 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring and two-dimensional echocardiographic examination. Our findings showed that LA function gradually deteriorated from patients with normotension, across patients with daytime hypertension, to patients with night- and day-nighttime hypertension. LA reservoir and conduit functions were particularly deteriorated in patients with nighttime and day-nighttime hypertension compared with patients with normotension and patients with daytime hypertension, whereas LA pump function was compensatorily increased only in the participants with day-nighttime hypertension. Only nighttime hypertension and day-nighttime hypertension were independently associated with the reduced reservoir and conduit LA function. The difference between patients with daytime and nighttime hypertension was found in reservoir and conduit LA but not LA pump function.