Epidemiological surveillance for acute myocardial infarction, experience obtained at the Hospital Calderón Guardia

Abstract

Rationale and Objective:Since acute myocardial infarc-tion represents one of the main causes of death in our coun-try, the health authorities decided in the year 2003 toinclude it as an illness subject to epidemiological surveil-lance. The present paper has as its purpose to give the mostsalient information of the epidemiological surveillance sys-tem for myocardial infarction implemented in the InternalMedicine service of the Calderón Guardia hospital.

Methods:We did a descriptive analysis of the informationcollected since October First, 2003 and until September 30th., 2004. Qualitative variables were analyzed with fre-quencies and proportions. The quantitative variables wereexpressed by means of measures of central tendency as wellas measures of dispersion. The differences between aver-ages and proportions were compared with the Student s ttest. Statistical significance was fixed at less or equal to0.05. We used the Epi Info program for data processing.

Results:The age average was 64.6 years (S.D. + 12.2years). 66.1% (n=84) of the patients were men. The per-centage of patients with dyslipidemia was significantlygreater en women than in men (p=0.007). The same findingwas seen with arterial hypertension (p=0.007). On the con-trary, the percentage of smokers was significantly greater inmen than in women (p<0,0001). 71.7% (n=91) of thepatients were classified as Killip-Kimball grade I. 18.4%(n=23) had complications during their hospital stay.Mortality in the Internal Medicine service of CalderónGuardia hospital was 6.3% (n=8).

Conclusion:The surveillance system for acute myocardialinfarction proposed in this paper is presented as an essentialtool to guide the strategies needed to contribute in theimprovement of the knowledge we have at present about thepatient with this important illness.