Roles of echocardiography in evaluation of acclimatization at high altitude

Objective To investigate the role of echocardiography in the evaluation of acclimatization at high altitude.Methods The physiologic indexes populations exposed to high altitude for one week,two months,more than 1 year and re-exposed populations were collected and underwent echocardiographical examinations.The pulse rate,respiration and hemoglobin were used to evaluate acclimatization levels.Results The acclimation rate in the four groups was 43.06%,57.41%,79.49% and 56.25% respectively.There were five high altitude polycythemia volunteers in the re-exposed group.The left ventricular internal diameter was significantly different between acclimated and un-acclimated groups.Cardiac indexes were also significantly different between the initial,entire acclimatization and re-exposed populations.The area under the curve was 0.766 in the assessment of acclimatization by cardiac indexes.Conclusion Cardiac functions play a role in the process of acclimatization.Cardiac indexes are of great value for evaluating acclimatization,especially long-term migrations.