PREVALENCE OF HYPERTENSION AND ITS ASSOCIATED FACTORS AMONG ADULTS RESIDING IN SUKUMBASI BASTI, DHARAN

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of hypertension and risk factors associated with it among adults residing in Sukumbasi Basti of Dharan. A total number of 188 aged above18 were assessed in this study. A simple random sampling method was applied. To determine the risk factors related to hypertension (i.e. BMI and WHR) height, weight, waist circumference, hip circumference and blood pressure were measured. SPSS version 27 and Microsoft Excel 2016 was used to analyze collected data. Descriptive analysis was used to find the prevalence of hypertension and chi-square test was used to test the significant association between factors of hypertension. The overall prevalence of hypertension was found to be 36.7%. Males had higher prevalence of hypertension than females which was 46.3% and 29.6% respectively. Age (p<0.01), gender (p= 0.019), family history (p=0.011), diabetes (p= 0.001), WHR (p= 0.002), BMI (p= 0.027), physical activity (p=0.044), smoking (p=0.019), chewing tobacco (p= 0.001), alcohol (p= 0.014), green leafy vegetables (p= 0.007), fruits (p= 0.011), education (p= 0.026), marital status (p<0.001), stress (p<0.01), monthly income (p=0.033), occupation (p=0.002) and sleeping hours (p= 0.002) were found to be significantly associated with prevalence of hypertension. Dietary habits like Calorie intake (P=0.029), carbohydrate intake (P=0.008), protein intake (P=0.041), fat intake (P=0.043), wheat (P=0.034), pulses/legumes (P=0.03), milk and its products (P=0.019), red meat (P=0.026) and fast foods (P=0.023) were also significantly associated with hypertension. The result of the study showed that prevalence of hypertension in Sukumbasi basti was high.