Forearm venous tone (FVT), carotido-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV), and left ventricular end diastolic diameter (LVD), left ventricular posterior wall thickness (LVPWT), myocardiac mass (MM), measured by echography were evaluated on 25 subjects with sustained essential hypertension and 30 normotensive subjects with same age and same sex. For the overall population, FVT is positively correlated with LVD (r = 0.45, p less than 0.001), with LVPWT (r = 0.37, p less than 0.01) and with MM (r = 0.55, p less than 0.001). PWV is not correlated with LVD but is positively correlated with LVPWT (r = 0.48, p less than 0.001) and with MM (r = 0.40, p less than 0.01). Stroke volume is positively correlated with FVT (r = 0.42, p less than 0.01), but not with PWV. This study shows that in a population of normals and sustained essential hypertensive subjects: i) indexes of venous compliance are correlated with myocardial thickness, myocardiac mass, left ventricular diameter and stroke volume, while ii) indexes of arterial compliance are only correlated with myocardial thickness. Thus, the modifications of arterial and venous compliance observed in sustained essential hypertension influence cardiac structure and function.