Which of the following statements regarding heart size and aging is true?

As individuals age, good cardiovascular health is marked by various structural and functional changes within the heart and vascular system. One significant change is that the left ventricular mass increases with aging. This increase is primarily due to the heart muscle thickening in response to heightened workload and alterations in the heart's compliance. Over time, factors such as hypertension, increased afterload, and physical inactivity contribute to these physiological adaptations, resulting in a larger left ventricular mass, which can impact cardiac performance.

Understanding this phenomenon is critical when assessing older adults because it helps clinicians anticipate and manage age-related cardiovascular changes. It also emphasizes the importance of monitoring blood pressure and encouraging physical activity to mitigate excessive increases in left ventricular mass.

The other statements, while relevant to cardiovascular health and aging, do not represent the changes in heart size directly associated with aging in the same way. For example, heart size does not uniformly decrease with aging, while capillary density indeed tends to decrease, but this is more related to vascular health than heart size per se. With aging, the sensitivity of baroreceptors may decline, which affects blood pressure regulation but is not directly related to heart size. Thus, while these other aspects are important considerations in geriatric care, they do not specifically address the changes in