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 l year and re-exposed populations were collected and underwent echocardiographic 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. (authors)