Evaluation of personnel blood pressure and its risk factors in uni-versity affiliated medical centers: Iran’s Health Day 2013

Background: Hypertension is a risk factor for life threatening diseases such as cerebrovascular accidents, coro-nary artery diseases, congestive heart failure and chronic renal failure. The prevalence of non-communicable diseases such as hypertension and diabetes including obesity has increased over the past few years in Iran. The first step for modification of cardiovascular diseases in a defined population is to assess the prevalence of their risk factors. This study was conduceted to assess personnel blood pressure and its risk factors in one of the med-ical universities of Tehran in the Health Day of 2013. Methods: This cross sectional study was performed from May 19, 2013 to May 24, 2013 (I.R. of Iran’s Health Weak) in one of the medical universities of Tehran. Participants completed voluntarily a researcher-made questionnaire which composed of demographic characteristics and variables about risk factors and pre-ventive factors of cardiovascular diseases such as smoking, history of diabetes, history of hypertension, physi-cal exercise status and so on. Blood pressure was measured by mercury sphygmomanometer and weight and height were measured by a ground analogue scale. Results: Of 195 persons participated in this study, 180 persons (92.3%) were male. The mean age of partici-pants was 33.75 (±9.87) yr. The mean of systolic and diastolic blood pressure was 114.44 (±8.67) mmHg and 73.06 (±8.45) mmHg, respectively. The prevalence of overweight, obesity, prehypertension and hypertension was 41.7%, 17.8%, 40.4% and 11.7% respectively. Only 8 persons (5.6%) were cigarette smokers. Conclusion: Despite the low prevalence of hypertension in our samples, the high prevalence of pre-hypertension and overweight need great attention. Interventions like life style modification could be effective in prevention of hypertension.