Abstract
It is often difficult to study the alterations of aging heart because there is a very large spectrum of cardiovascular function among elderly population. Aging is associated to an increase in prevalence and incidence of coronary disease. In fact, the 50% of aging subjects have a known or latent coronary artery disease and only few of them underwent invasive studies to exclude coronary heart failure. Furthermore, a decline in cardiac performance can be related also to an age-related reduction in daily physical activity with a secondary deconditioning. For all these reasons it is not so easy to clarify what is “normal heart” in the elderly people. In our opinion interactions among aging, disease, and lifestyle could be considered in interpreting age-associated changes in cardiovascular structure and function (1).
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Varricchio, M., Tagliamonte, M.R., Rizzo, M.R., Varricchio, G., Gambardella, A. (1998). The Aging Heart. In: Barbagallo, M., Licata, G., Sowers, J.R. (eds) Recent Advances in Geriatrics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1483-5_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1483-5_13
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