An accessible screening program identifies hidden cardiovascular and renal risk factors in health care workers

Hypertension, diabetes mellitus and dyslipidemia are recognised as silent killers. Diagnosis depends on awareness and check up. Despite the awareness and access to health care, they go undetected and contribute to cardio-vascular and renal disease risk. A survey was conducted at a large urban academic Health centre with the aim to detect cardio-vascular and renal risk factors among individuals working or visiting an academic health sciences center. All subjects underwent a history, blood pressure recording [6 readings with an average of 5 and the first discarded], lab including fasting blood sugar, lipid profile and urine microalbuminuria. Six Hundred and Eight were screened over a two year period. The average age was 49.8 years and 61.5 % were females. 12.8% percent were already on hypertensive medications, 5.4% smoked, 2.9% were known diabetics and 6.5% were known dyslididemic. Among the known , 16 (2.6%) had uncontrolled BP. 90 [14.8%] new hypertensives were diagnosed. There were 21 with known diabetes, 9 with uncontrolled fasting blood glucose and 1 with microabluminuria. There were 9 [1.4%] found to have diabetes which was unkown and an additional 27 [4.4%] were found to have impaired fasting glucose. One patient with newfound DM already had microalbuminuria. The average was; cholesterol ; 5.46. HDL; 1.49 LDL 3.34. TGA 1.47. 19% of men had a Chol/ HDL ratio of > 4 and 4.9% of women had a Chol/ HDL ratio of > 5. was noted in 40 (6.8%) of the patients including 1/9 newly detected DM and 1 existing patient with DM, 9 with obesity and 30 with hypertension. From those screened, 15% had undiagnosed hypertension, 1.4% had undiagnosed diabetes and 6.8% of all patients had microalbuminuria. A large fraction of apparently healthy people working in an academic health sciences center had significant reversible risk factors for cardiovascular and renal disease unknown to them.