Heart weight: Its normal limits and relationship to selected variables in males aged 25-44 years
Description
Heart weight is frequently used with other criteria at autopsy to assign hypertension as a cause of death in the absence of definitive signs of any other pathology that could have caused death. The extent to which heart weight is influential in that assignment is unknown. A major problem is to determine if heart weight is abnormal There are no universally accepted limits of heart weight in normally healthy persons. Although many studies have addressed this issue, few have been well designed and/or implemented and results are inconsistent. The purpose of this study was to determine 'normal' heart weight of healthy males aged 25-44 years who died of trauma, and to determine a criterion, based on heart weight, that classifies hearts as enlarged or not with higher sensitivity and/or specificity than the currently used criterion of 400 grams The data for this study were obtained from the Community Pathology Study, conducted in New Orleans over a ten-year period beginning in 1969. Of the 1292 male deaths that were autopsied and investigated during this time period, only the deaths due to trauma resulting from accidents, suicides, homicides, and poisoning (805 cases) were used to determine 'normal' limits of heart weight The mean heart weight of normal subjects was 363.50 $\pm$ 68.82 grams. Heart weight increased with age and there were no racial differences in each of the four five-year age groups considered; blacks tended to have lower heart weights but the differences were not statistically significant. Age, body weight, and trunk length were significant predictors of heart weight in normal persons. The upper limit of heart weight that discriminates 'normal' from 'diseased' hearts satisfactorily is 420 grams. This criterion should be used only when evidence of disease pathology is absent at autopsy, and it indicates the absence of CHD or hypertension with greater accuracy than their presence. On the basis of the findings it is believed that the actual misclassification that occurs as a result of using heart weight as a criterion to assign hypertension as a cause of death at autopsy is minimal