Cardiovascular disease risk of bus drivers in a city of Korea.
OBJECTIVE
To prevent the occurrence of CV events such as MI and stroke among professional drivers in Korea, bus drivers were compared to other occupations through the Framingham risk scoring system (FRS) or metabolic syndrome (MS) of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk assessment methods.


METHODS
In October 2012, a health examination survey was conducted for 443 male bus drivers in a big city. Their CVD risk factors were compared to those of a 'total employed' (A group) and 'crafts and machine operators' (B group) extracted from Fifth Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES, 2010) data by using FRS and MS. We calculated proportions of the CVD risk factors distribution between bus drivers and the A, B groups by the bootstrapping method. The Odds ratio (OR) between CV event risk combining MS with CHD equivalent risk of FRS and occupational factors like shift patterns and professional driving duration/age ratios (PDAR) of bus drivers was calculated through multinominal logistic regression.


RESULTS
The proportion of BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2 was 53.9% and waist circumference ≥ 90cm was 40.9% among bus drivers. Hypertension and MS prevalence of bus drivers was 53.3%, 49.9% which is higher than 17.6%, 22.6% in the A group and 19.7%, 23.8% in the B group respectively. OR of high CV event risk in alternate shift was 2.58 (95% CI 1.33~5.00) in comparison with double shift pattern and OR in PDAR ≥ 0.5 was 2.18 (95% CI 1.15~4.14).


CONCLUSIONS
Middle aged male drivers in a big city of Korea stand a higher chance of developing CV event than other professions of the same age.
Seung Yong
SY
Shin
Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Chosun University Hospital, Pilmundaero 365, Dong-gu, Gwang-Ju, 501-717, Korea. eecg@daum.net.
Chul Gab
CG
Lee
Han Soo
HS
Song
Sul Ha
SH
Kim
Hyun Seung
HS
Lee
Min Soo
MS
Jung
Sang Kon
SK
Yoo