Echocardiographic consequences of smoking status in middle-aged subjects
Background: Smoking is known to have many short- and long-term cardiovascular effects. Cardiac index (CI), which is cardiac output indexed to body surface area, is considered to be a valid measure of cardiac performance. We investigated whether there were any differences in CI or other echocardiographic variables between never smokers, ex-smokers, and current smokers in a cardiopulmonary healthy p
