Abstract

Author(s): Ruth Adriana YAGUACHI ALARC

Introduction: Cardiovascular diseases worldwide constitute a public health problem, being responsible for 16.7 million deaths per year. Likewise, in Ecuador it represents around 25.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Among the causes are inadequate eating habits, physical inactivity, tobacco consumption and harmful use of alcohol.

Objective: Determine the lifestyles, nutritional status and cardiovascular risk of Health workers.

Materials and methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional study was carried out. It included 130 workers from the Martin Icaza Provincial Hospital in Babahoyo-Los RíosEcuador during the years 2015 and 2016. To collect the information on lifestyles, the validated FANTASTIC questionnaire was used. The Framingham score was applied to determine cardiovascular risk.

Results: The research sample consisted of 82 women and 48 men, representing 63.1% and 36.9% respectively. The age ranged from 23 to 68 years. Approximately, half of the sample presented inadequate food consumption and alcohol consumption; the majority did not use tobacco and had good management of stress and its associated characteristics. On the other hand, 72.3% had a BMI of excess weight (overweight 40.8% and obesity 31.5%) and 96.2% had a high percentage of fat. The biochemical parameters of glucose, HDL cholesterol and blood pressure were found normal, while 57.7% reported elevated total cholesterol levels. Finally, the lifestyle was rated bad (33.1%) and the cardiovascular risk was low (88.5%).

Conclusions: The early identification of inappropriate lifestyles allows promoting healthy habits that help prevent cardiovascular disease in the long term in workers with risk factors.