Prevalence of Hypertension Among Resident Doctors of Clinical Departments in a Tertiary Care Hospital in North-Eastern Region of India

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Hypertension is a global pandemic andrising every year. Detection of hypertension among doctorsis of utmost importance as hypertension is one of the majorcauses for diseases like chronic kidney disease, stroke, heartfailure and there is paucity in the studies done on doctors forprevalence of hypertension in India. Objective: The studywas undertaken to estimate the occurrence of hypertension inresident doctors of the clinical departments of a tertiary carehospital of northeastern India.Material and methods: It is a hospital based cross-sectionalstudy, conducted in the Department of General Medicine,Paediatrics and General surgery of tertiary care hospital ofnortheastern India including 100 doctors participants. Datalike age, height, weight, family history, smoking history weretaken. Blood pressure was measured on two occasions, oneon an emergency day and another on a non- emergency day.Statistical analysis: Data entry was done and evaluated usingMicrosoft Excel 2010 and IBM SPSS statistics 20.Results: The prevalence of hypertension and prehypertensionamong the doctors was found in 36% and 13% respectively,on an emergency day. This huge number of hypertension wasreduced to 19% when BP was taken on a non- emergency day.There was also significant positive relation between smokingand mean systolic BP (p-value <0.05).Conclusion: The prevalence of hypertension among doctorsis no less than the general population. Stress like emergencyduties may be an important factor of higher prevalence ofhypertension in doctors. There is a need of changes in lifestylefor better future for doctors and hence for the population.