Prevalence and impact of high BMI in CAD patients

Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Background High body mass index (BMI) is a precursor to coronary artery disease (CAD) and an aggravator of the other co-existing CAD risk factors such as diabetes and hypertension. Lifestyle changes (e.g. balanced diet and exercise) in patients with high BMI are usually overlooked, although they contribute positively to prevention and improvement of CAD. Purpose The aim of this study is to calculate the prevalence of overweight and obesity in known CAD patients in both genders, in correlation with diabetes, hypertension, exercise and diet in CAD patients and to compare the findings to EUROASPIRE IV conducted in 2015 (1). Methods This study retrospectively included 362 patients (88% male; mean age 67 years) with a history of CAD (MI, PCI or CABG) from the registry of Cyprus heart survey in a hospital, in Nicosia from 2011 to 2014. Age, gender, date of myocardial infarction event, date of PCI or CABG surgery as well as CAD risk factors such as BMI, exercise, diet, hypertension and diabetes were noted on their visit to the cardiac clinic. Results Our study showed an overall similarity in BMI prevalence across both genders. The prevalence increased from 17.7% in patients with normal BMI (18.5-24.9) to the highest CAD prevalence of 49.2% which was seen in overweight (BMI = 25 –29.9) patients. However, there was a drop in the prevalence of obese (BMI = 30+) patients to 32.9%. This is supported by EUROASPIRE IV (1) which highlighted that CAD prevalence was higher in overweight patients (male = 83%; female = 80%) than obese patients (male = 36%; female = 44%) by nearly 2-fold. Furthermore, within the higher-than-normal BMIs, we recognized more non-diabetic CAD patients (115 overweight; 67 obese) in our study than diabetic CAD patients (62 overweight; 55 obese). On the contrary, hypertensive CAD patients (106 overweight; 80 obese) were more frequent than non-hypertensive CAD patients (71 overweight; 43 obese). Overweight patients split in nearly half when it came to exercise and diet (96 exercise, 82 do not; 90 diet, 88 do not). While in obese patients there was a higher proportion of patients not exercising or following a diet (47 exercise, 72 do not; 32 diet, 87 do not). According to EUROASPIRE IV (1), obesity contributed to higher prevalence of diabetes as patients did not lose weight. Conclusion Overweight and obese patients make up a large percentage of CAD patients. High BMI had a negative additive effect with hypertension but not with diabetes on the risk prevention in CAD patients which mismatches with the EUROASPIRE IV (1) findings. Despite BMI being a modifiable risk factor, not adhering to a diet or exercise was noticed in overweight and obese patients, which in return weakens their prevention of CAD.