Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Young Patients of Coronary ArteryDisease: Differences over a Decade

Abstract

Introduction: Studies evaluating temporal trends of Coronary artery disease (CAD) in youngpatients, from the India, are still lacking. The aim of this study was to evaluate temporal differencesin risk factors of young patients of CAD over a decade.Methods: This is a single centre retrospective study performed in a tertiary care teaching institutionin North India. Case records of young patients (≤40 years) with acute coronary syndrome betweenJanuary 2000 to December 2001 and January 2009 to December 2010 were obtained. Recordswere sought for active smoking, family history, waist size, blood pressure, hypertension, fastingand postprandial blood sugar and lipid profile for both groups and analyzed using SPSS v.17. Forthe purpose of the study, p value <0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: Medical records of a total of 79 and 83 patients with young CAD (≤ 40 years) wereobtained for 2000-01 and 2009-10 period respectively. An increase in proportion of femalepatients, hypertension (p=0.004), dysglycemia (p<0.001), family history (p=0.01), metabolicsyndrome (p<0.001), low high density lipoprotein (HDL) (p=0.07) and mean waist size (0.03)was noted over the years. Among males, increase in number of dysglycemics (p=0.0002), positivefamily history (p<0.0001) and mean waist size (0.032) was statistically significant.Conclusion: Over a decade the patients with young CAD in our study, there was an increase inproportion of patients with metabolic syndrome, dysglycemia and low HDL.

Keywords: Coronary Artery Disease, Smoking, Hypertension, Dyslipidemia, Diabetes Mellitus