Blood pressure among school children aged 5-14 years

Study title:

Blood pressure among school children aged 5-14 years: A Database extracted from an active surveillance conducted in Dibrugarh under Jai Vigyan Mission Mode Project on Control of Rheumatic Fever/Rheumatic Heart Disease

Study settings:

The study was conducted in 99 schools of Dibrugarh district, Assam, India.

Survey procedure:

The study was offshoot of Task Force study entitled “Jai Vigyan Mission Mode Project on Community Control of Rheumatic Fever/Rheumatic Heart Disease in India” carried out during 2008-2010 in Dibrugarh district, Assam, India. The district has 1,631 schools covering 1,80,153 children. Out of which data were collected from 10,176 schools children from 99 schools. After proper filtering and cleaning, the final dataset consisted of 10,003 participants. Sampling was done by stratified random cluster method. The schools were stratified into five groups according to educational levels, government vs. private or provincialized schools. A representative sample of 99 schools (Lower primary: 72, Middle English/ Middle Vernacular: 16, government aided/private: 4, provincialised: 5 and higher secondary: 2) were chosen at random. Children were advised to remove footwear and wear light clothes before measurement of body weight (to the nearest 0.5 kg). A digital weighing machine (Krup, India) was used for all measurements. Height was measured (to the nearest 0.5 cm) using stadiometer (Seca, UK). Body mass index (BMI) was calculated as weight in kilograms / height in meter squared. Overweight and obesity were assessed by BMI for age18.

Blood pressure was recorded in sitting position with child’s back supported, feet on the floor, the right arm supported and cubital fossa at the heart level. Mercury sphygmomanometer (Diamond, India) was used to measure BP. According to the ages of the children different sizes of cuff recommended by working group were used. Systolic blood pressure (SBP) was recorded when the sound first appeared and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) was taken at the point of 4th Korotkoff phase of sounds. Three measurements were taken at interval of five minutes each and mean of these three readings was included in the dataset.