Self-awareness Regarding Obesity and Specific Therapy in Patients with Overweight or Obesity and Cardiovascular Diseases from Moscow Region

Abstract

Objectives: Despite the proven effectiveness of lifestyle interventions and specific medications in the treatment of obesity, little is known about their use in real-world practice. Aims: To study the awareness of patients about the problem of overweight/obesity, as well as the clinical practice of non-drug and drug therapy according to the survey. Materials and Methods: Eligible patients were recruited from the prospective outpatient registry of patients with cardiovascular diseases. The design of the study was a cross-sectional cohort single-centre. All of the included patients completed a specifically designed questionnaire. The study included 295 patients (mean age 66.8 ± 11.8 years) with a body mass index (BMI) of ≥ 25 kg/m2. One hundred eight (36.6%) individuals were overweight, 124 (42.2%) had first-class obesity, 42 (14.2%) had second-class obesity, and 21 (7.1%) patients had third-class obesity. Results: 252 patients (85.4%) were informed of being overweight/obese, and all of them received non-drug recommendations for the treatment of obesity. Anti-obesity medications (AOM) were recommended only to 25 (8.5%) patients: 3 – overweight, 11 – obesity class I, 6 obesity class II, and 5 – obesity class III. Twenty-one (7.1%) patients took the prescribed medications (84% adher-ence). The drugs were more often taken by patients with class II and III disease (40.5% and 57.1% of patients, respectively). Overweight (8.5%) and class I obesity (18.0%) patients took these drugs less often (p < 0.0001). Conclusion: The results of the survey have demonstrated good awareness of patients about their obesity/overweight and quite frequent use of non-drug obesity therapy. However, the rate of AOM prescription was extremely low.