Prevalence and risk factors of hypertension among bank employees in Dhaka city of Bangladesh

Abstract

: Jobs in the banking sector are perceived challenging and stressful; therefore, the likelihood of hypertension among the bank employees is high. However, no previous study investigated the prevalence and associated factors of hypertension among the bank employees in Bangladesh. Therefore, in this study, we estimated prevalence and risk factors of hypertension among a sample of bank employees in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. A cross-sectional design was employed to collect data from the 180 bank employees selected conveniently. Multiple logistic regression was conducted to observe the factors associated with hypertension. Prevalence of hypertension and pre-hypertension among the respondents were 24.44% and 32.22%, respectively. Furthermore, more than half of those found with hypertension were previously undiagnosed. We found that bank employees’ sex, family size, monthly salary, parental hypertension, parental diabetes, parental renal disease, and daily meat consumption were the factors significantly associated with hypertension. Our findings indicated that hypertension prevalence among the respondents was higher than that of national prevalence. Awareness build-up and healthy lifestyle is recommended to prevent hypertension associated morbidity and mortality in the future. Further studies could be carried out to identify the causal mechanisms of hypertension and appropriate interventions to address the issue.