Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is usually considered to be a compen- satory adjustment of heart muscle to an inreased work load. LVH develops in the course of valvular or congenital heart disease, or when part of the myocardium is damaged by long-standing ischemia or infarction. In the hypertrophied heart the muscle fibers increase in size, not in number. The fibers are found to contain a larger number of myofibrils and the cell organelles are larger. From epidemiologic studies it is known that even mild LVH is associated with myocardial ischemia, ventricular arrhythmias, and sudden...