摘要：Introduction: High blood pressure indirectly identified through an-thropometric indicators may be an efficient strategy for detection and control, mainly because these measures can be implemented without specialized technical appa-ratus. The study was done with the objective of evaluating waist cir-cumference as marker for hyperten-sion. Methods: Blood pressure, height, weight and waist circumference was measured using standard pro-cedures for all participants in the cross sectional study. t test and ANOVA test was used to compare mean values of waist circumference among different groups. Results: There was a statistically significant difference in waist cir-cumference between age groups (F = 4.388, p=0.013); education groups (F = 11.037, p=0.000) and BMI groups (F = 57.7, p=0.000). 63.5% of hyper-tensive had waist circumference more than the gender specific cutoff point. Both mean systolic and dias-tolic blood pressure was higher in the individuals with waist circum-ference more than the gender specif-ic cutoff for all the categories of BMI in both the genders. The proportion of hypertensive was 45.5% in nor-mal weight and 57.4% in over-weight group with waist circumfer-ence more than gender specific cut-off (p<0.05). Conclusion: The study emphasizes the need for using simple anthro-pometric tool like waist circumfer-ence for assessing risk of hyperten-sion in communities.".
