PP.LB01.06

Abstract

Objective: Assess the prevalence of arterial hypertension and identify associated factors, in nursing professionals from a high-complexity oncology center in Brazil. Design and method: Cross-sectional study involving 150 nursing professionals (82,7% women, 39 (8.3) years, time since graduation 15.6 (7.7) years, per capita income 1988.58 (900.7) US $) selected through random sampling. The study received Institutional Review Board approval. Blood pressure was measured with validated automatic device in the sitting position, with appropriate cuff size to the arm, following the recommendations of the VI Brazilian Guidelines of Hypertension. Hypertension was defined for blood pressure values greater than or equal to 140 and / or greater than or equal 90 mmHg or use of antihypertensive medication. Fischer's exact test and chi-square were used to check for differences between the prevalence rates and Student's t-test to check for differences of means. The prevalence ratio of hypertension was used to analyze the association between variables, using Poisson regression. Statistical significance was set as p smaller than or equal 0.05. In the multivariate analysis model we included the variables with p smaller than or equal 0.20. Results: The prevalence of hypertension was 23.3%. There was statistically significant difference among hypertensive and non-hypertensive, respectively, for the following variables: age [44.6 (8.6) vs 37.0 (7.5) years), Body Mass Index [30.2 Kg/m2 (4.4) vs 26.8 Kg/m2 (4.6)], Waist/hip ratio [(0.89 (0.07) vs 0.83 (0.08)], time since graduation [22.3 years (8.4) vs 13.6 years (6.2)] and the smoking habit. In the multivariate analysis remained associated with hypertension the following variables: length of work experience, monthly income, waist-hip ratio, Body Mass Index and the smoking habit (Table 1).Conclusions: It was observed that the prevalence of hypertension was similar of the other studies with similar samples. The association of hypertension with increased anthropometric indicators and smoking, reinforce the importance of adopting habits and styles of healthier life, mainly because they are health care professionals, who have the main focus of its activity in the ’care’.