Abstract

Forty-six patients with endemic fluorosis were assigned to 4 subgroups based on their age and then received echocardiograms that were compared with echocardiograms of 46 healthy cases in a region affected by fluorosis and 46 healthy cases in a region unaffected by fluorosis via observations; a preliminary exploration was made on the changes of 2D echocardiograms of patients with endemic fluorosis. Results demonstrated the following: (1) The aortic wall was thickened for all patients (100%) in the fluorosis group, the thickness being within 7.5–9.8 mm; the thickening occurred in the periphery of aortic wall and the thickness was irrelevant to age and disease course; (2) Moderate or above echo intensification of aortic wall occurred in 37 cases from the fluorosis group (79.8%) and only 4 cases from the control group I (8.7%); (3) For the fluorosis group, the pulsating amplitude of aortic root measured by M-mode ultrasound was less than that for the control groups; (4) For the 31–40 year old subgroup and the 41–50 year old subgroup of the fluorosis group, the thickness of the left ventricular posterior wall was greater than that for the control groups; there was no difference in terms of atria, ventricles and other items. The results of the current study suggested that: endemic fluorosis may lead to aortic sclerosis which would significantly precipitate and worsen the transformation of sclerosis to calcification for the main arteries; therefore, the concept of fluorine-associated aortic sclerosis was proposed and discussions on the pathological and physiological mechanism of fluorine-associated aortic sclerosis were made.