Cardiac morbidity in subjects referred for echocardiographic assessment at a tertiary medical institution in the Nigerian savanna zone.

Cardiovascular diseases constitute a major public health problem both in the developed and developing countries. The profile of morbidity and mortality however, varies between regions and countries and even within countries. The importance of recognizing the cardiovascular conditions that prevail in a particular area is very important in health planning and for improving healthcare services. We therefore set out to describe the cardiac morbidity pattern from our echocardiographic data. Between August 2002 and September 2004 (24 months), we reviewed the echocardiographic diagnosis of all patients aged 15 years referred for echocardiography. Information obtained from the records included age, gender, names of referring hospital/physician, clinical diagnosis and echocardiogram findings. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 10.0 software. A total of 594 persons were referred for echocardiographic examination in the 2 year study period. Of these, 489 (82.3%) had an abnormal echocardiogram. We analyzed those with abnormal echocardiograms. There were 272 males and 217 females. The male to female ratio was 1.3:1. Hypertensive heart disease was the commonest echocardiographic diagnosis, present in 228 (46.6%) of the patients. This is followed by dilated cardiomyopathy seen in 82 (16.8%) and then rheumatic heart disease in 55 (11.2%). Other findings were Non dilated cardiomyopathy (6.1%), Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (5.7%), pericardial diseases (3.7%), Ischemic heart disease (4.7%), Cor pulmonale (1.4%) and Endomyocardial fibrosis (0.4%) of patients. It was noted that majority of the cases were advanced with irreversible myocardial damage. Systemic hypertension remains the most important cause of CVD morbidity in savanna region of Nigeria. Addressing the major cardiovascular risk factors especially systemic hypertension will go a long way in reducing the burden of cardiovascular diseases.