Abstract

PREVALENCE OF CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE IN GERIATRICS AND DRUG UTILIZATION EVALUATION IN GERIATRICS

Arya O.*, Shara Abraham, Chinju K. Sabu, Sharon Varghese, Jayakumar K. S. and Jiji Alfred

ABSTRACT

Background: cardiovascular diseases are ailments that are primarily based on the day to day habits of people. Non communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and strokeare linked to lifestyle choices hence are known as lifestyle diseases. More than 60% of death globally are linked to chronic diseases such as heart diseases, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases and are projected to account for 47 million deaths annually in the next 25 years. The main cause identified was substantial changes in people’s diet along with the increased consumption of meat, dairy products, vegetable oils and alcoholic beverages. Method: A Prospective cross sectional study was carried out in Eraviperoor Grama Panchayath of Pathanamthitta district in kerala on the topic prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and drug utilization evaluation in geriatrics. A structured questionnaire was used to collect information on demographic parameters, prevalence of lifestyle disease, risk factors, and co-morbidities, impact of social habits, prescribing and usage pattern of drugs. Adherence and reasons for non- adherence were measured. Results: Out of 500 patients the majority of study subject with cardiovascular diseases lies between the age group of 61-70, and it is common in female (52.2%) when compared to males (47.8%). cardiovascular diseases are more evident in unemployed patients (76.6%), these unemployment is attributed to their sedentary lifestyle which can be correlated with the physical activity because out of 500 patients, majority of them are not doing any physical activity (62.6%) which increases the risk for cardiovascular diseases.The correlation of social history with the cardiovascular disease indicated that alcohol and smoking were the most prominent risk factors. The correlation of past medical history with present lifestyle disease were made and the results concluded that patients with diabetes as a past history were more prone to hypertension. Hypertension was significantly associated with the development of coronary artery disease, dyslipidaemia also showed as a risk factor in the progression of coronary artery disease. In order to measure the patients adherence to drug therapy we have provided fourteen questionnaires and out of 500 selected patients, 376(75.3%) of them are medically adherent to their drug therapy while 57(11.5%) are having good knowledge about their medication and only 4% are poorly knowledge about the names of their medications. Conclusion: The prevalence of cardiovascular disorders was higher in older people than he younger age.comorbid conditions and lifestyle are the most important factors that contributing the development of cardiovascular disease. The patients with cardiovascular disorders had a low level of awareness and low level of knowledge about their disease, follow-up data, treatments and adverse drug rections.most of the patients are medically adherent to their drug therapy. The physicians must make an endeavor to increase the level of awareness among the patients.

Keywords: prevalence, cardiovascular disease, drug utilization evaluation, geriatrics.