The priority order of risk factors for coronary artery disease with respect to gender based differences

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the distribution of coronary artery disease (CAD) risk factors among the patients and to determine the priority order and examine the difference in both sexes.Method: The study was performed on 444 patients (326 men, 118 women) who were angiographically documented to have CAD at Dokuz Eylul University Faculty of Medicine between February and May, 2009.There are many CAD risk factors. Among them, sex, age, smoking, diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension, obesity, family history, social-economic status, depression, anxiety and physical inactivity factors were considered in the study. The risk status of the patients were evaluated by the questionnaire, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-2), The Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (K.U.N.G. (M.I.N.I.), International Physical Activity Questionnarie-Short (IPAQ-s). The data were evaluated by SPSS 15.0 statistical software package. For statistical analyses, descriptive analysis, chi-square test and relative entropy were used.Results: Among the proven CAD risk factors, for men age is found to be in the first place (92.9 %), followed by physical inactivity (60.1%) and hypertension (58.9%). Whereas for women, the first three were hypertension (87.3%), age (85.6 %), physical inactivity (84.7%). In the case of presence of four or more risk factors, women showed higher tendency of CAD compared to men.When proven and possible CAD risk factors are taken into consideration together, it was found that the ranking differed according to the gender.Conclusion: CAD is a multifactorial disease with respect to risk factors. The risk factor ranking shows significant differences between the sexes. While maintaining the individual care and preparing the national programmes, these differences should be taken into consideration to prevent CAD and CAD dependent mortality.New researches should be performed to prove the possible CAD risk factors.Keywords: coronary artery disease, risk factors, woman, man