Normal Weight of the Heart in Nepalese Adults and its Relation to Body Length: A Postmortem Study

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Cardiac enlargement is an independent risk factor for sudden cardiac death.  Definitive criteria for cardiac enlargement are not formulated yet in Nepalese adult population as we do not have reference of normal cardiac weight because of lack of study. There is also dearth of data on correlation of heart weight with body length. Hence this study was conducted.

Methods: A cross sectional descriptive study was undertaken at forensic medicine department at Patan hospital for a period of 3 years. The heart was weighed from selected bodies by Mini electronic kitchen scale. Lengths of the deceased were also measured. Cases with natural death, history of medical illness and attempted cardio version and pathological heart were excluded. The data was analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficient to determine correlation. P values less than 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant

Results: Out of 250 cases, there were 173 (69.2%) males with male to female ratio of 7:3. The range of ages in the study is 20 to 58 years in males and 20 to 60 years in females. Range of body lengths in the study are 58 to 68 inches in females and 62 to 73 inches in males. The heart weights ranged from 188 to 575 g with an average of 331 g with an SD of 56.7 g. The heart weighs 252+/- 36 gram in females and 265+/-41 grams in male. In males there was a positive statistical correlation of heart weight with respective body length at p value 0.01.

Conclusion: Males’ heart was statistically correlated with body length but same was not seen in females. Males' organs were heavier than that of females'. The heart weights were found to be smaller compared to that of western countries. These results can be taken as a reference of a standard heart weights to differentiate pathological from normal variants in adult Nepalese population.