Medicina Ocupacional y Asuntos de Salud

Abstracto

Hypertension among Police Personnel with Reference to Perceived Stress - A Cross Sectional Study

Mahesh Puri A and Mohan Joshi P

Aim: A cross-sectional study was conducted amongst 340 police personnel for finding the prevalence of hypertension and associated risk factors with a reference to perceived stress from Dec 15 to Dec 17 in metro city in central India.

Methods: In this study, after obtaining written informed consent, hypertension among police personnel was measured and classified as per strategy of WHO STEPS wise approach and criteria used was JNCVIII. The height and weight was assessed by standard methods and the perceived stress was measured by validated and structured scale PSS-10. The data were collected and entered into excel spreadsheet and analysis of data was done by Epi Info 7.2.2.2 and Open Epi 3.01.

Results: The prevalence of hypertension in study group was 37.6% (128 out of 340 participants) and perceived stress scale – 10 reported 43% of participants had surprisingly reported low stress, followed by average stress (38%) among study population. The factors with significant association with hypertension were reported as age, sex, education, designation, length of service, tobacco and alcohol consumption, additional salt intake, body mass index and waist to hip ratio, positive family history of hypertension and perceived stress. The length of service and family history of hypertension were reported significant on multivariate analysis.

Conclusion: The association of stress was found to be significant with designation, tobacco and alcohol consumption and length of service among study participants and only alcohol consumption and family history of hypertension on multivariate analysis.