Screening de hipertensión arterial en niños escolares de 6 a 12 años de las escuelas urbanas de la ciudad de Loja

Abstract

Abstract:The vision of arterial hypertension as an exclusive chronic disease of adulthood has varied in its concept, since in recent decades, as a result of the adoption of certain lifestyles, it has had a substantial increase in presentation in pediatric age, where It is considered as an increase in systolic and diastolic blood pressure greater than the 95th percentile according to sex, weight and height. However, a high underdiagnosis rate persists. Screening was carried out with 75 children (51 boys and 24 girls) from the José Ángel Palacio school, aged between 7 and 10 years, who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and to whom two measurements were made of blood pressure and anthropometric measurements, which were collated with standardized tables according to age, height and weight to establish the diagnosis. A prevalence of 4% was found for systolic AHT and 2.7% for diastolic AHT, according to global prevalence, and a predominance in male sex and in overweight or obese individuals, but which was not statistically significant.