The effect of ageing, hypertension and its treatments on regional myocardial function

Hypertension and ageing cause impaired diastolic function. Tissue Doppler echocardiography (TDE) enables assessment of regional myocardial diastolic and systolic function. An application of this is the detection of myocardial ischaemia where regional abnormalities would be expected to occur in the territory supplied by an affected coronary artery. In order for TDE to be useful in the detection of ischaemia, other pathologies and treatments should not cause similar changes.