BackgroundMyocardial work acquired by echocardiography has emerged as a novel method to evaluate myocardial function. We investigated global and segmental myocardial work in hypertension (HT) among patients with different patterns of left ventricular (LV) geometry in order to analyze the contribution of segmental myocardial work to global myocardial work.Methods and resultsOne hundred twenty-five patients with HT were divided into 4 groups: normal geometry (NG), concentric remodeling (CR), concentric hypertrophy (CH) and eccentric hypertrophy (EH). Longitudinal strain (LS) and the following indices were obtained by echocardiography: myocardial work index (MWI), myocardial constructive work (MCW), myocardial wasted work (MWW), and myocardial work efficiency (MWE). The global longitudinal strain (GLS) decreased gradually among the groups: NG, CR, CH and EH (P< 0.001). Global MWI (GWI) and global MCW (GCW) did not change across the different LV remodeling groups. Global MWW (GWW) increased and global MWE (GWE) decreased in both CH and EH group (P< 0.001). The LS of basal and middle regions reduced gradually in all HT subgroups, while apical LS decreased only in the CH and EH groups (P< 0.001). Basal MWI and MCW decreased in the CH and EH groups (P= 0.025, 0.007, respectively). Apical MWI and MCW increased in the NG and CR groups (P= 0.015, 0.044, respectively), with a decreasing trend in the CH and EH groups. All segmental MWW elevated and MWE reduced significantly in the CH and EH groups (P< 0.001). Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses demonstrated a significant association between left atrial volume index (LAVI), GLS, GWE and LV hypertrophy. At the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, optimal cutoff values of GLS, Apical LS, GWE and Apical MWE discriminating LV hypertrophy were 0.9072, 0.8049, 0.8325 and 0.7414, respectively.ConclusionApical myocardial work increases in the early stages of LV remodeling, likely as a compensatory mechanism to maintain normal global myocardial work. Segmental myocardial work analysis offers a reliable means to explore the distribution of myocardial impairment in hypertensive patients at different LV remodeling stages.Graphical AbstractSupplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12947-023-00310-y.