Socioeconomic status, cardiac risk factors, and cardiovascular disease: A novel approach to determination of this association

Socioeconomic inequality is one of the important issues in cardiovasculardiseases (CVDs). The aim of this study was to investigate the distribution,relation betweenselected cardiac risk factors,type of CVD,and the socioeconomic status (SES) in the hospitalizedpatients with heart disease in Isfahan,Iran.

This analytical,cross-sectional study was conducted in Isfahan in 2013. Thepopulation consisted of all patients with CVD admitted to the public,private hospitals. Thesample size was 721. Data collection was conducted through one researcher-made questionnairewith three sections: demographic,disease,and SES questionnaires. To determine the SES of thepatients,the indicators of income,housing status,occupation,family size,and education wereused. Data analysis was conducted in two statistical levels of descriptive,inferential.

69.1% of the patients were placed in the poor status,and there was no wealthy statuswithin the subjects. The five most frequent CVDs were chronic ischemia,unstable angina,arrhythmia,congestive heart failure (CHF),and acute myocardial infarction (MI),respectively.The three highest frequent risk factors in the patients were hypertension (HTN) (47.2%),diabetes (33.6%),and hyperlipidemia (32.6%). Regression analysis of the risk factors,thetype of heart disease on the SES revealed that there were statistically significant differencesbetween patients who were smokers (P,0.030),those who had valve disease (P,0.010),adjusted for age,gender,and marital status.

Our findings showed that the frequency of CVD risk factors were higher in lowerSES groups,thus SES can be a strong predictor for the occurrence of the CVD risk factors aswell as the CVDs.