Prevalence of Known Risk Factors among Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

Abstract

Understanding the pathophysiological role of risk factors in the development of coronary artery disease (CAD) is important. Dyslipidemia, hypertension, family history of CAD and diabetes are identified as independent risk factors for the disease. It is reported that more than 50% of patients with CAD lack any of the conventional risk factors whereas some reported these risk factors play a significant role in CAD. The present study attempted to determine the prevalence of dyslipidemia, hypertension, family history of CAD and diabetes among the patients (n=102) who were awaiting Coronary Artery Bypass Graft at the Cardiothoracic unit of Sri Jayewardenepura General Hospital. Among these patients 67 were males (age 56  9.6yr) and 35 (age 58  7.7yr) were females. Data on dyslipidemia, hypertension, family history of CAD and diabetes were gathered using an interviewer administrated questionnaire. The descriptive statistics were analysed (SPSS 16.0 version). Dyslipidemia was the most prevalent (87.3%) risk factor followed by hypertension (70.6 %), family history of CAD (53.9%) and diabetes (53.9%) in the study sample. A majority of the individuals presented three (33%) or two risk factors (32%) while 22.5% from the total sample presented all four risk factors. When considering the different combinations of risk factors hypertension, dyslipidemia, family history of CAD was the most common combination in the group with 03 risk factors. A majority of males and all of the rural females were dyslipidemic. In the total sample the percentage distribution of diabetes was significantly (p=0.005) high among urban residents. However, females residing in urban areas in addition to having diabetes (p=0.01) were hypertensive (p=0.02). The data indicate that a majority of the patients with CAD had at least two of above risk factors and dyslipidemia was the major risk factor among 88% of the study population irrespective of residency. Keywords : Coronary artery disease, risk factor, diabetes, dyslipidaemia, urban Acknowledgement: National Science Foundation grant NSF/RG/2011/HS/18.