Awareness and perceptions of health care providers and researchers on vascular ageing: Quantitative Survey Results.

Description

Introduction:
Vascular Age (VA) can assess cardiovascular disease risk,
independently of chronological age, however it is not yet widely applied
in routine clinical practice. A quantitative questionnaire was developed
to assess current knowledge gaps related to VA and barriers to implementation in routine practice in both research and clinical settings.

Methods:
Using a stepwise mixed-methods approach, a quantitative
questionnaire was constructed. The 22-item anonymous survey was
based on a previous qualitative analysis including 80 participants with
multiple scientifc backgrounds, and included questions on perceptions/
beliefs, knowledge, and implementation of VA. The survey was disseminated to clinicians and researchers world-wide, via social media and targeted emails from well-known societies (including Artery, ESH, ISH, ESC).

Results:
276 (50% female) completed the questionnaire, 46% were clinicians, 33% researchers, 10% students. Clinical specialties included cardiology (36%), internal medicine (22%) and General Practice (10%). While
84% of clinicians and researchers rate VA importance as high or very high
(Table), only 11% of clinicians measure VA in clinical settings. Limiting
factors include cost, lack of guidelines and lack of knowledge.

Discussion:
These results show that implementation of VA is very low in
clinical settings and awareness of VA needs to be improved via planned
targeted awareness strategies and educational material.

Period	22 Oct 2022
Event title	Artery 2022
Event type	Conference
Location	Nancy, FranceShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International