The prevalence of smoking among Croatian hospitalized coronary heart disease patients.

The aim of this paper was to investigate the prevalence of smoking using selected anthropometric variables in a sample of hospitalized coronary heart disease (CHD) patients in Croatia (N = 1,298). A total of 444 subjects (34.6%) were non-smokers, 548 (42.6%) were smokers and 293 (22.8%) were ex-smokers. Men, on average, smoked more cigarettes per day than women (22.62 vs. 19.84 cigarettes, p < 0.001) and they also had bigger index "pack-years" than women (36.96 vs. 33.91, p = 0.024). Men were more often smokers and ex-smokers than women (47.4% vs. 30.8% for smokers and 25.0% vs. 22.8% for ex-smokers, p < 0.001). In this study a high prevalence of smoking was found among CHD patients in Croatia. Unless it is decreased, it can be expected that CHD patients in Croatia will continue to experience adverse effects more often than other CHD patients in the rest of Europe.