[Prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in adult from Talca, Chile]

Abstract

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has several traditional risk factors (RF), and some of them are potentially modifiable.

Aim: To determine the prevalence of most common risk factors in adult population in Talca in Central Chile.

Subjects and methods: We studied 1007 subjects aged 18 to 74 years (66% women), living in Talca, selected by a probability sampling. They answered a questionnaire and anthropometry, blood pressure, lipid profile and blood glucose were measured.

Results: Thirty seven percent of subjects smoked, 70.1% had a body mass index over 25 kg/m(2) and 41% had an abnormally high circumference. High blood pressure was found in 37% (36% of these subjects were unaware of this condition), 44.5% had hypercholesterolemia, 21.5% had low HDL cholesterol, 40.1% had hypertriglyceridemia and 26.3% had high blood glucose levels.

Conclusions: There is a high prevalence of risk factors for CVD in adult population from Talca. The prevalence of risk factors is higher than that reported by the 2003 National Health Survery.