The Epidemiology of Acute Coronary Syndrome in Oman Results from the Oman-RACE study

Objectives: this study aimed to evaluate the epidemiology and coronary risk factors of acute coronary syndrome (acs) in oman. methods: data were collected through a prospective, multinational, multicentre survey of consecutive patients, hospitalised over a 5-month period in 2007 with a diagnosis of acs, in yemen and five arabian gulf countries (oman, bahrain, kuwait, qatar, united arab emirates). here we present data of omani patients aged ≥20 years who received a provisional diagnosis of acs and were consequently admitted to 14 different hospitals. results: there where 1,340 confirmed acs episodes in 748 men and 592 women (median age 61 years). the overall crude incidence rate of acs was 338.9 per 100,000 person-years (p-y). the age-standardised rate (asr) of acs was 779 and 674 per 100,000 p-y for men and women, respectively. the asr male-to-female rate ratio was highest in the st-elevation myocardial infarction (stemi) group (2.26, 95% confidence interval ([ci], 1.63 to 3.15) followed by the non-stemi (nstemi) group (1.68, 95% ci 1.28 to 2.21) and unstable angina (0.79, 95% ci 0.66 to 0.99). unstable angina accounted for 55%, stemi for 26% and nstemi for 19% of acs cases. among the coronary risk factors, there was a high prevalence of hypertension (68%), diabetes mellitus (dm) (36%), hyperlipidaemia (63%), and overweight/obesity (65%), with a relatively low rate of current tobacco use (11%). conclusion: our study confirms a high incidence of acs in omanis and supports the notion that the cardiovascular disease epidemic is also sweeping developing countries.