Question

Imagine that your father talks with you about his recent physical examination . It has been a number of years since he had a medical examination . His physician conducted a battery of tests and asked your father about his lifestyle . As a result, the physician told your father that he is at risk for developing cardiovascular disease . Your father was told that his weight, blood pressure, physical activity level, cholesterol, nutritional habits, and stress levels have increased his chances of developing cardiovascular disease . Your father tells you that he feels great, was physically active throughout high school and college, looks better than most people his age, and cannot imagine that he is truly at an elevated risk . Because he knows you are aware of cardiovascular disease risk factors, he asks you the following questions:

1 . How does one know if the measures taken are accurate?

2 . What evidence suggests that these characteristics are truly related to developing car- diovascular disease?

3 . How likely is it that the physician's evaluation of the tests is correct?

4 . What aspect of the obtained values places one at increased risk? For example, how was a systolic blood pressure of 140 mmHg originally identified as the point at which one is at increased risk? Why not 130 mmHg or 150 mmHg? Why has the blood pres- sure risk been decreased from 140 to 130 and even 120 mmHg? Your father reports being physically active, but what does that mean? Is he engaging in sufficient physical activity to be at increased health or reduced risk for negative health outcomes? Similar questions could be asked about each of the measurements obtained .

5 . What evidence exists that changing any of these factors will reduce risk?

Answer 1

1.Measures taken to determine the risk of cardiovascular disease are recording of blood pressure, laboratory tests including blood sugar, lipid profile etc. All the results will be compared with the standard risk criteria for cardiovascular disease and then determine the risk. If there is any doubt in accuracy, then tests can be repeated and then confirm the risk.

2.Various studies conducted all over the world indicates increased stress, lack of physical activity, high blood pressure ,diabetes etc increases the risk of coronary artery disease .

3.Physician's evaluation will be more than 50 per cent correct since the all risk factors mentioned above have an increased risk for developing coronary artery disease.

4.All the measured values of blood pressure, blood glucose level, lipid profile etc are an average that has been considered as risk factors for most of the population. It doesn't mean that if the BP is 144 systolic will definitely leads to cardiovascular disease. Every parameters are like this only.