The relation between lifestyle and chronic diseases is now well established. For example, smoking, high dietary fat intake, lack of exercise have been identified as indepenednt risk facotrs for the development of cardiovascular disease. So
changing
risk
factors related to lifestyle is very important to minimize the burden of many kinds of chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease and cancer. Patients who are at increased risk of developing chronic diseases should be identified and if
this
increased risk in modifiable unhealthy behavior, appropriate advice should be given to encourage behavioral change. That is one of the most important role of primary care physician. However we do know how often patients with varying risk facotrs
receive
lifestyle advice from their physician in Korea. This study is to know how often patients having cardiovascular risk factors receive lifestyle advice from their physician and what is the predicitng facotr of that. Cross-sectional study was done by
direct
interview. Subjects were 3151 people aged 19-61 years who had consulted a physician at least once during 12 months before interview and who were employee of the national company which had branches nationwide. Possible cardiovasculare risk factors
were
identified from the result of health check. Subjects were asked whether they had received lifestyle advice for each of identified risk factors from physician. The data about sociodemographic characteristics also were collected during interview.
We
used
X2 test for trend to establish whether increasing risk levels were associated with a change in the likelihood of receiving advice about modifying risky behaviors. The proportion of smokers who received advice about smoking was just
29.3%, but
smoking was unhealthy behavior most likely to receive advide from physician. The proportion of subjects receiving advice about exercise was only 8.6% and was significantly higher among those who were diabetic(27.6%), hypertensive(22.7%), or who
had
a
history of cardiovascular disease(36.4%). The proportion of subjects receiving advice about low dietary fat intake was only 6.8%. The proportion was higher among obese subjects(13.7%)and rose with increasing serum cholesterol
level(X2Trend=9.46, df=1;p<0.01). The proportion of subjects receiving advice about alcohol consumption was 18.1%. Women were significantly less likely than men to receive advice about smoking, exercise, alcohol consumption except
about
dietary intake and weight control. Age was significantly associated with the likelihood of receiving lifestyle advice. Parietns reported a low rat of receiving lifestyle advice from physician. This results suggest that more preventive advice
about
healthy lifestyle be given in primary care.
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