DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2017.v05i02.072

Pages: 668-671

Acute myocardial infarction is one of the most common diagnoses in hospitalized patients, the typical patient with myocardial infarction is a man more than 50 years and women more than 60 years of age who presents with severe retrosternal chest pain which is squeezing, heaviness, choking or smothering radiating to left shoulder or jaw. We recently observed that acute myocardial infarction occurs in much younger age, more common in people with history of driving auto rickshaw in Chennai city. We know the risk factors for myocardial infarction are smoking, hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, obesity, inactivity, etc. but we do not know whether any particular occupation is a risk factor for myocardial infarction. We recently observed that more admissions in ICCU in our hospital with myocardial infarction are young males with history of driving autorickshaw in the Chennai city for many years. This study aims to find the incidence of acute myocardial infarction in young adults in Chennai city in relation to different occupations. This study was conducted at the ICCU, Government Royapettah Hospital and Institute of Non-Communicable Diseases, Chennai between May 2009 and December 2010. It included 612 patients admitted with Acute Myocardial Infarction. The diagnosis was based mainly on the clinical symptoms and signs such as retrosternal chest pain, sweating and radiation to the shoulder and jaw with breathlessness and the ECG findings such as ST segment elevation more than 1 mm in limb leads and more than 2 mm in chest leads. We categorized them according to the age and occupation and analyzed the statistical significance with reference to Chi-square test.