Women with prehypertension in primary care - Risk profile on the basis of selected cardiovascular risk factors.
BACKGROUND
Demographic, social and economic trends will serve to increase the importance of women as healthcare consumers. Design. The aim of the study was to assess cardiovascular (CV) risk in the normotensive female patients during single visit to primary care (PC) offices.


METHODS
Demographic data, history of coronary heart disease (CHD), diabetes (DM), smoking habit and family history of CV diseases were obtained from women who visited general practitioners. Moreover, blood pressure (BP), pulse rate, weight and height used to calculation body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) were performed. Prehypertension was defined as a systolic BP (SBP) of 120-139 mmHg, and/or a diastolic BP (DBP) of 80-89mmHg.


RESULTS
Prehypertension was observed in 21.5% of the whole group of female PC patients. SBP, DBP, BMI and WC revealed significant trends towards increase with age among both prehypertensives (p<0.001) and normotensives (SBP, BMI, WC: p<0.001; DBP: p<0.05) and in the whole group (p<0.001). Nevertheless, heart rate (HR) significantly increased with age only among prehypertensive women (p<0.05). The CV risk of the studied adult women increased progressively with presence of overweight, obesity and visceral obesity. The CV risk of the youngest groups was associated mainly with high prevalence of smoking, and with high prevalence of CHD and DM among the oldest female patients.


CONCLUSIONS
The prevalence of majority of CV risk factors increase with age among both prehypertensive and normotensive women, which should stimulate PC practitioners to identify and modify them.
Gryglewska
Barbara
B
Department of Internal Medicine and Gerontology, Medical College, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland.
Sulicka
Joanna
J
Fornal
Maria
M
Wizner
Barbara
B
Cwynar
Marcin
M
Grodzicki
Tomasz
T
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000502:physiology; D015992:Body Mass Index; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009765:Obesity / Q000150:complications* / Q000453:epidemiology; D050177:Overweight; D015995:Prevalence; D011320:Primary Health Care; D012306:Risk; D012307:Risk Factors; D012907:Smoking / Q000009:adverse effects*; D055105:Waist Circumference