[Risk factors and atherosclerotic complications in Vienna: myocardial infarct and stroke].

Examination of all patients who had been admitted with myocardial infarction or with acute cerebral attacks to a medical department within one year reveals differentiation by age and by sex of these events. Age and sex differentiate the patients also with regard to course and mortality of the disease. Retrospective evaluation reveals specific patterns of risk factors for specific atherosclerotic complications. There is a prevalence of smoking in myocardial infarction of men while metabolic parameters predominate atherosclerotic complications in women. Diabetes and low HDL-cholesterol correlate with the incidence of mortality of myocardial infarction in men and women. Mortality in cerebral hemorrhage of men is associated with hypertension and hyperuricemia and the same atherosclerotic complication in women correlates with hypertension and diabetes. The pattern of risk factors in cerebral malacia with a lethal course differs from that in lethal cerebral hemorrhage. In men it is dominated by smoking and by hyperuricemia and in women by hypertension and by hyperuricemia. Finally, it is not the single risk factor that predisposes for atherosclerotic complications and for the mortality incidence of these diseases but it rather seems that the total of several risk factors results in severe atherosclerosis. In this pattern of risk factors single parameters seem to be exchangeable by others.