t can benefit men older than 40 years:
- Detection of smoking and smoking cessation advice.
- Detection of hypertension or high blood pressure.
- Screening for cholesterol or high blood cholesterol.
- Other activities.
is estimated that in US smokes about one in three people, and among the population over 40 years smoke one in two people. We also know people who smoke more than upper middle class (about 45%) and those living in big cities.
Today it is indisputable that smoking is the most common preventable cause of premature death in developed countries. In europe die each year some 40,000 people from diseases directly related to snuff, among which ischemic heart disease by obstruction of the coronary arteries that are supplying the heart muscle, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease of the bronchi and blood vessel disease of the brain.
It has been shown that the degree of awareness of people about the harmful effects of snuff is low. For this reason the physician should undertake the following tasks on their patients:
- Question all patients about their smoking
- Advise all smokers to quit
- Helping those who want to quit to get
- Agree monitoring visits.
Detection of hypertension or high blood pressure
Hypertension is defined as a sustained elevation of blood pressure levels above those considered normal and, at this time, because of the evidence accumulated by numerous scientific studies over in recent years, is set at 140/90 mmHg (or millimeters of mercury).
We know for a fact that this disease is a risk factor of prime importance for the heart and blood vessels. Currently one in three adults have this disease.
The benefits of treatment have been clearly established and proven in numerous medical studies. At present it is recommended to measure and record blood pressure of blood every two years in men older than 40 years. In cases in which blood pressure is kept high so many records, often require treatment and medical follow-up long term.
Cholesterol or high blood cholesterol
Numerous scientific studies have taught us that the numbers of blood cholesterol are associated with disease and death caused by heart problems and blood vessels. The risk of any of these health problems increases progressively as they rise in cholesterol levels in the blood, so they pose a predictor or announcer of all deaths in men aged 40 to 60 years. In this group of people are much more common traditional cardiovascular risk factors like high blood pressure, use of snuff and a sedentary lifestyle or lack of exercise, among others.
At present the treatment of hypercholesterolemia in primary prevention , ie before the disease appears, requires classifying patients according to individual risk assessment, and medications only treat the cases where it is most likely that the benefits outweigh the risks.
The situation changes when we secondary prevention, ie when the patient has the disease in its early stages, not yet clearly manifest. In these cases, medications to treat high blood cholesterol have proved their usefulness in different medical studies.
In general, it is recommended to men aged between 35 and 40 years to 65 years a determination of total blood cholesterol every 5 years and opportunistically, ie, use of other reasons for medical consultation.
talk about high levels of cholesterol in the blood when the patient has a higher level of 250 mg / dl; discuss borderline high cholesterol with cholesterol levels between 200 and 250 mg / dl, and those figures desirable cholesterol below 200 mg / dl.
When a patient has already had a cardiovascular disease such as angina pectoris, a myocardial infarction or stroke, diagnosis of hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol) is set as a fraction of cholesterol called LDL (English acronym for the so-called low-density lipoprotein or low density lipoprotein). We speak in these cases of hypercholesterolemia when the number of LDL cholesterol (or "bad" cholesterol) is greater than 130 mg / dL cholesterol to the upper limit when the LDL cholesterol is between 100 and 130 mg / dl, and when i