Objective: To evaluate the affect of the metabolic syndrome on common carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) in patients with essential hypertension. Subject and method: 98 essential hypertensive pa-tients were divided in 2 groups: a group of 50 hypertensive patients with metabolic syndrome (mean age +/- SD: 66.0 +/- 8.1) and a group of 48 hypertensive patients without metabolic syndrome (mean age +/- SD: 62.1 +/- 11.9) treated in Department of Cardiology, No.103 Hospital from 09/2012 to 05/2013. Methods: Cross-sectional, descriptive, comparative study. MetS was defined by the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III guidelines. Using B-mode ultrasound to measure the common carotid IMT. Statistics was processed on Epi info 2002 software. Result: BMI, abdominal circumference, glucose, triglyceride in hypertensive group with metabolic syndrome were significantly higher than that of hypertensive group without metabolic syndrome (p0.05). Carotid IMT values of hypertensive group with metabolic syndrome was significantly higher than that of hypertensive group without metabolic syndrome (0.93 +/- 0.23 mm versus 0.83 +/- 0.2 mm
p0.05). Common carotid IMT was significantly increased according to the sum of quantitative components of MetS. Conclusion: Metabolic syndrome was associated with increased common carotid IMT in hypertensive patients.