Sunscreen Use is not a Surrogate for Healthy Lifestyle After Controlling for Wellmeasured Confounders

Background: Smoking may lead to future cardiovascular events among those with CVD and may result in heart failure.The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology recommend complete cessation of smoking for patients with coronary and other vascular diseases.Little data on prevalence of smoking among people with CVD and CHF are available.Methods: We used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2002 to examine the prevalence of current smoking by presence of CVD and CHF.The CVD was defined as self reported ischemic heart disease (IHD, [angina, coronary heart disease or heart attack]) or stroke.The prevalence data were adjusted for age, gender, race/ethnicity (white, black, Mexican American, other) and education (high school).We used SUDAAN to account for complex sampling design.Sampling weights were used to estimate weighted prevalence.Results: Of 10,105 participants aged !20 years included in these analysis, 1,027 reported CVD (785 IHD, 373 stroke) and 349 reported CHF.Current smoking was reported by 20.1% of participants with CVD and 25% of participants without CVD.Similarly 20.1% and 24.6% of participants with and without CHF were current smokers.After adjusting for demographic characteristics, the prevalence was 26.8% and 24.5% among those with and without CVD (p ¼ 0.38 for difference in prevalence) and 25.1% and 24.5% among those with and without CHF (p ¼ 0.86 for difference in prevalence).Conclusions: These data show no difference in the prevalence of current smoking by presence of CVD or CHF.The results call for additional efforts to promote smoking cessation, especially among people with CVD and CHF.Increased use of existing resources and cessation programs can be helpful.