A retrospective study of postmortem heart weight in an adult Norwegian population.

The aim of the study is to get a better understanding of what a normal heart weight is and to provide updated reference tables applicable in a Caucasian population. Most previous studies are outdated and often based on other ethnic populations, and these studies are often used in reference tables in pathology textbooks. We included 692 Caucasian subjects, age 20-98years, out of 2834 autopsies performed at the Department of Pathology and Genetics, St. Olavs Hospital-University Hospital of Trondheim between 2003 and 2012. Subjects with various heart or other chronic diseases were excluded. Regression analysis was applied to evaluate the relationship between heart weight and age, gender, body weight, height, body mass index and body surface area. We provide updated reference tables and discuss different approaches to the estimation of heart weight.