Cardiovascular Risk Assessment Among Urban Population of Bangladesh Using WHO/ISH Risk Prediction Chart

INTRODUCTION: Globally, noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are increasingly recognized as a major cause of morbidity and mortality. It is noteworthy from the evidence that Cardiovascular disease is now a major public health problem in Bangladesh in term of morbidity and mortality and it is logical, considering NCD the risk profile of Bangladesh to predict that there is a large segment of adult population at risk for being ideal victims of cardiovascular events which is still undiagnosed. The Objective of this study is to estimate the 10 years cardiovascular risk of the study population who has not yet developed clinically manifest cardiovascular disease.

METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 150 respondents with age ranged from 40-70 years who have not yet developed clinically manifest cardiovascular disease. The respondents were selected randomly from urban primary health care centers in Dhaka city.Pre tested questionnaire was used for data collection. The WHO/ISH risk prediction chart for South-East Asian Region D (SEAR D) was used to predict the risk of developing CVD event in next 10 years. Data were analysed by SPSS version 16.0.

RESULTS: Regarding the risk categories of developing CVDs, 122 (81.3%) of the total respondents were found to have low (<10%) risk of developing CVDs in next 10 years, where 23(15.3%) have moderate (≥10% to 20%) risk, 5(3.4%) have high (≥20%) risk. Females showed the higher proportion of moderate (17.2%) and high (4.0%) risk of developing cardiovascular event in compared to males (moderate-11.8%, high risk-2.0%).

CONCLUSIONS: About 19% of the study populations are at moderate to high risk of developing CVD events in next 10 years which is quite high in numbers and should be addressed for preventive interventions. Moreover, this cardiovascular risk scores may offer useful insights that can assist health service delivery planning.