Associations between Area of Residence and Cardiovascular Risk

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the primary cause of death in many developing countries. The most preventable form of CVD is coronary heart disease (CHD). The present study aimed to identify cardiovascular risk factors and correlation with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease in 364 patients from a rural community in Romania. There were assessed the traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease. We used descriptive statistic method to calculate the average and standard deviation of assessed parameters. The data were processed by using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test. Risk scores were calculated by using the University of Edinburgh Risk Calculator. The mean value of systolic blood pressure was 130.9 mmHg, total cholesterol of 3.38 mmo1/1, and HDLc 1.33 mmo1/1. The risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) was significantly higher in urban than in rural (8.03% vs 6.6%). The risk of myocardial infarction (MI) was higher in urban than in rural, too (4.5% vs 2.8%). The risk for cardiovascular disease was significantly higher in urban than in rural (19.4% vs 12.9%). There was no significant risk of stroke, coronary heart disease or death due to cardiovascular disease in urban or rural. Further studies will establish the main mechanism of linkage between and tightly correlation with cardiovascular risk factors.