Risk assessment of Cardiovascular Disease among working women and men: A comparative study

Abstract

Traditionally, heart disease has been confined to be a man’s disease and when it comes to women’s health issues the main focus used to be on menopause and breast cancer, leading women to believe that cardiovascular disease is not an important health issue for them. to assess the knowledge of cardiovascular diseases among selected subjects, 2)to know about their dietary and lifestyle pattern and 3)to find out the risk variation of CVD between selected working women and men subjects. This study was a cross-sectional study and carried out in Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi district. For this study total 200 subjects, 100 working women and 100 working men to age group (30-60 years) were selected by adopting purposive random sampling. The subjects were interviewed by risk assessment index (RAI), the study tool. The maximum women subjects (40%) was in 51-60 years age group while maximum men subjects (50%) were in 41-50 years age group. Majority of women (68%) did not know about the CVD where as high proportion of men (76%) were having knowledge of CVD. The rate of workplace stress was high among working men accounting 26% and familial stress was high among working women that is about 18%. From the scores calculated, 70% of working women and 60% of working men were in moderate risk of CVD and remaining 30% of women subjects and 40% of men subjects were in low risk of CVD. No subjects were found in high risk category. Both women and men were at equal risk of CVD. Programs for awareness and intervention of risk of CVD should be run by government and there should be no gender difference in using diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.