RISK FACTORS AND AWARENESS LEVELS REGARDING ISCHEMIC HEART DISEASES AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS OF A PRIVATE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF PESHAWAR, KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA

Abstract

Introduction: Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD) is a major cause of illness and disability and a leading cause of death in the modern world and that is why is considered as great epidemic menace of mid-twentieth century. It is the “Black Death” of our time. This study was conducted to determine the awareness levels regarding risk factors of Ischemic Heart Disease among preclinical students of RMC and to determine risk factors currently present among the included students of RMC.
Materials & Methods: It was a cross-sectional study conducted from February to May 2012 on all 200 students from first and second year MBBS of Rehman Medical College. Data were collected using a Universal Sampling approach through an interview based questionnaire, which included questions related to awareness level of students and their risk factors regarding IHD. Descriptive statistics were obtained using SPSS 20.0. The Chi Square test was used to test for associations, keeping p<0.05 as significant.
Results: Mean age of the 143(71.5% response rate) student respondents was 19.8±1.004 years (range 18-23 years). Of these, 84(58.7%) students were male and 59(41.3%) were females. Vast majority of the students (90.2%) were well aware of the risk factors associated with IHD. Students were found to be vulnerable to various risk factors associated with IHD such as lack of exercise (43%), family history of IHD (27.3%), presence of stress (66.3%) and use of junk food per week (39.1%). No association was found between awareness levels of students with smoking habits, exercise, and stress, use of oil or ghee and consumption of junk food.
Conclusions: Despite the fact that over whelming majority of the students were well aware of the risk factors for IHD, a fairly large proportion were prone to common risk factors such as lack of exercise, use of junk food, family history of IHD and presence of stress. These factors may impose both short term as well as long term threats to the overall health of the medical students.
Keywords: Ischemic Heart Disease; Awareness; Risk Factors; Medical Students; Life Stress; Smoking.