Assessment of plasma D-dimer level and its correlation with disease severity among hypertensive patients

Abstract

It has been reported that inappropriate acute thrombus formation is the pathophysiological substrate underlying increased risk and severity of target organ damage in hypertension. However, the relationship between severity of hypertension and D-dimer has not been well characterized. This study was aimed to assess plasma D-dimer level and its correlation with disease severity among hypertensive at Yikatit 12 Hospital Medical College (Y12HMC), Ethiopia. A comparative cross-sectional study was conducted at Y12HMC among 100 participants (60 hypertensive and 40 controls). The correlations between variables were determined using correlation coefficients, regression analysis, and different parametric and nonparametric tests. We observed higher D-dimer levels among hypertensive compared to the healthy controls (P<0.001). The D-dimer levels were found to be increased significantly with the severity of hypertension (P<0.001). D-dimer was found to have a diagnostic power of 86.9% in differentiating complicated from uncomplicated hypertension at 0.83mg/l cut-off value. This study suggests that D-dimer level was higher among hypertensive than control groups and it was also increasing significantly with the severity of hypertension. This suggests that hypercoagulability of fibrin plays a role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disorders and thromboembolic complications of hypertensive patients. Further studies need be done on larger scale and using more robust study designs such as cohort to establish the causality of the association between severity of hypertension and D-dimer level.