Abstract

The development of coronary atherosclerosis and ischaemic heart disease had been attributed to risk factors that include but not limited to hypertension. These factors were determined without reference to data from autopsy studies. It is likely that there is no significant difference on the grades of coronary atherosclerosis in hypertensive’s when compared with the non-hypertensive’s. The aim of this study, therefore, is to test this hypothesis by assessing the impact of hypertension on the grades of atherosclerosis. A prospective postmortem study carried out from 1st of June, 2012 to 31st of May 2013. Consecutive sampling technique was employed to recruit the study population. At post-mortem, the coronary artery of each subject was graded on the basis of the percentage of cross-sectional area stenosis. The data obtained was analyzed with the SPSS version 20. There were 142 cases in this study with a male preponderance. Their mean age was 49.86 years. The grades of coronary atherosclerosis increases with age. The grades of coronary atherosclerosis in hypertensive’s were more severe when compared with the non-hypertensive’s (p=0.0001). The odds of a hypertensive developing grade III coronary atherosclerosis relative to a grade I lesion was 17.655 higher. The grades of coronary atherosclerosis is related to the presence of hypertension, thus we reject the null hypothesis.

Key words: Hypertensive’s, non-hypertensive’s, risk factors, grades of coronary atherosclerosis.