Centenarians are increasingly being encountered in clinical practice. The aim of the study was to characterize centenarians' clinical features and cardiovascular system.

A prospective, observational, cross-sectional, case-control study included 118 hospitalized >100-year-old patients compared to 50 octogenarians, selected in Milan (Italy) from December 2010 to December 2017, to assess their clinical and echocardiographic characteristics.

Centenarians were mostly women with small body surface area; long history of hypertension; chronic renal failure; and low incidence of smoking, diabetes, dyslipidemia, hyperuricemia, coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, and cerebrovascular disease. They showed high prevalence of severe cognitive impairment and disability. Almost half of patients (46%) were hospitalized for congestive heart failure (HF), mostly diastolic (80% of cases). Centenarians' hearts had reduced left ventricular end-diastolic dimensions (25.3 ± 3.8 mm/m²), increased septal thickness (13.3 ± 1.9 mm), and higher relative wall thickness (0.58 ± 0.1). The ejection fraction was usually normal and rarely depressed (57.1% ± 11.7%), whereas the E/e’ ratio was considerably increased (17.0 ± 6.0). Noninvasive evaluation of ventricular-arterial coupling parameters revealed significantly higher values of LV end-diastolic elastance in all centenarians versus octogenarians (0.4 ± 01 mm Hg/mL/m² vs 0.18 ± 0.2 mm Hg/mL/m², P < .0001) and in centenarians with HF versus those without HF (0.5 ± 0.1 mm Hg/mL/m² vs 0.34 ± 0.1 mm Hg/mL/m², P < .0001).

The centenarians' cardiovascular system manifested a significant increase in LV diastolic stiffness with consequent susceptibility to diastolic HF. A progressive afterload increase and a passive load independent mechanism could have contributed to such changes.