Background:

Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) remains the screening tool of choice for thoracic aorta (TA) dilatation. Differences in TA diameters (TAD) according to gender (G), age (A) and body surface area (BSA) have been previously reported. However, these reports are limited by small sample size, different measurement sites or heterogeneous cohorts. There is scarce data on the influence of ethnicitiy on TAD.

Objective:

We designed a prospective nationwide multicenter registry to determine the normal diameters of the thoracic aorta at all TA segments in healthy adults of both G and their correlations with A, ethnicity and BSA.

Methods:

A national, prospective and multicenter registry was carried out in 1000 healthy adult people (mean age: 38.3 ± 12.7 years, 553 women, 56.7% of caucasian origin). Aortic measurements were made following the current recommendations at 6 levels: aortic annulus, sinus, sinotubular junction, proximal ascending, arch and proximal descending aorta. Pooled data showed a positive correlation between all TAD and A or BSA (p<0.001), similar in both G. In patients with obesity the correlation was better with height than BSA.

Resultados:

The 95th percentile was found below 3.80 cm for all absolute aortic diameters, 2.08 cm / m for those indexed by height and 2.11 cm / m2 per body surface. Nomograms were obtained for 3 age categories to predict TAD from BSA with no need of G distinction. Native americans showed significatly lower absolute and indexed TAD than caucasian (p<0.01) from annulus to isthmus.

Conclusions:

While age and BSA were significant determinants of aortic dimensions at six levels, we have also detected differences in TAD according to ethnicity, suggesting normative values should also be defined for each ethnic group. We propose nomograms of indexed TAD for different age and ethnic groups without G distinction.

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