Coronary artery disease : conventional risk factors & angiographic findings among young Iraqi adults

الملخص EN

Background : coronary artery disease CAD is predominately manifest in older individuals, but the disease process begins in the young.

Prevention of CAD requires identification and treatment of risk factors among young people.

Objective : to study the frequency of conventional risk factors for CAD among young adult and determine their angiographic finding and the relation between these findings and risk factors for CAD.

Methods : all patient with coronary artery disease aged 40 years or less who were admitted to the Iraqi center for heart disease and underwent confirming coronary angiography from April 1999 – May 2009, conventional CAD risk factors and their coronary angiographic findings were evaluated.

Results : five hundred and six (506) patients were enrolled in the study , their age rang 20 -40 year and mean age was 36.54 ± 4.07, 447 patients (88.3%) were male and 59 (11.7%) were female and male to female ratio was 7 : 1 .

smoking (39.3%) is the most common risk factor followed by ; positive family history of premature CAD (31.4%), hypertension (27.8%), hyperelipedemia (21.3%) obesity (16.6%) and diabetes mellitus (13.4%), regarding angiographic data, left anterior descending artery (LAD) is the most affected vessel (79.5%) followed by right coronary artery (40.4%).

Conclusions : compared with male young female patients have higher frequency of hypertension and diabetes.

Young patients with CAD disease tend to have multiple risk factor and high preponderance of single vessel disease.