Socioeconomic Status, Cardiac Risk Factors, and Cardiovascular Disease: A Novel Approach to Determination of This Association

BACKGROUND: Socioeconomic inequality is one of the important issues in cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). The aim of this study was to investigate the distribution and relation between selected cardiac risk factors, type of CVD, and the socioeconomic status (SES) in the hospitalized patients with heart disease in Isfahan, Iran. METHODS: This analytical and cross-sectional study was conducted in Isfahan in 2013. The population consisted of all patients with CVD admitted to the public and private hospitals. The sample size was 721. Data collection was conducted through one researcher-made questionnaire with three sections: demographic, disease, and SES questionnaires. To determine the SES of the patients, the indicators of income, housing status, occupation, family size, and education were used. Data analysis was conducted in two statistical levels of descriptive and inferential. RESULTS: 69.1% of the patients were placed in the poor status, and there was no wealthy status within 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 and the type of heart disease on the SES revealed that there were statistically significant differences between patients who were smokers (P = 0.030) and those who had valve disease (P = 0.010), adjusted for age, gender, and marital status. CONCLUSION: Our findings showed that the frequency of CVD risk factors were higher in lower SES groups and thus SES can be a strong predictor for the occurrence of the CVD risk factors as well as the CVDs.