DOI: 10.36347/sajb.2020.v08i06.005

Pages: 165-167

The purpose of this study is to screen school going children of age 5 years to 16 years for hypertension by using waist to height ratio in Jharkhand. This study includes 640 healthy children after age group between 5 years to 16 years with no past history of any significant chronic illnesses. Anthropometric parameter is height and waist circumference and is measured in centimetres. Systolic & Diastolic blood pressure has been measured in mm of Hg by sphygmomanometer in sitting position. Waist to height ratio was calculated as waist circumference (cm)/ height (cm). Children with a WHtR <0.5 were defined as normal whereas a WHtR more than or equal to 0.5 was defined as high WHtR. In our study we have selected 640 healthy children between the age group 5yrs to 16 yrs out of which 70.46% were male and 29.53% were female children. In this 640 children 5% (n=32) were found to have high waist-to-height ratio. The proportion of children with high SBP and high DBP were 6% and 1% respectively out of 640 children. Within the high WHtR children 37% (12 children) have high SBP and 6% (2 children) have high DBP. The ability to detect high systolic blood pressure or high diastolic blood pressure by waist-to-height ratio as a screening tool is statistically significant (P<0.001). Waist-to-height ratio has low sensitivity and thus some children may be missed by this method. Since it is very easy to measure and application of a single cut-point across all ages it may be a screening tool in Indian population and can be used widely during routine school physical examination.