Responsible Variables in Discriminating Bangladeshi Adult Patients of Hypertensive Retinopathy from other Adults

The information presented here were analytical results of data collected from 950 adults of ages 18 years and above residing in a semi-urban area of Bangladesh to identify the variables responsible for the prevalence of hypertension and retinopathy simultaneously among the adults. Out of 950 respondents 5.3% were hypertensive and 70.0% of them were suffering from retinopathy also. The sample hypertensive retinopathy patients were 3.7%. This health problem did not vary significantly with the variation of residence, religion, marital status, economic variation, body mass index, and sedentary activity of the adults. But males, non-Muslims, married persons, adults of lowest economic activities, underweight adults and adults involved in sedentary activity had higher risk of facing this health problem. Over age, illiteracy, non-involvement in any recognized work, physical inactivity, process food consumption, prevalence of diabetes, longer duration of diabetes and hypertension were significantly the higher risk factors for the prevalence of hypertensive retinopathy. The risk ratios for these levels of variables were 10.94, 5.61, 5.75, 2.42, .48, 2.19, 3.29, and 1.19 times respectively as these were for other adults. However, the most responsible variable was duration of hypertension followed by age, education, duration of diabetes, process food consumption, etc. These were identified by discriminant analysis.

Keywords: Hypertension, Retinopathy, Socioeconomic variable, Responsible variable, Risk ratio, Discriminant analysis.