[Level of knowledge on cardiovascular health in schools]

In order to determine the status of cardiovascular health knowledge, a standardized questionnaire was administered to 325 students (currently) in their last year, in 18 high schools of Trieste. The schools were divided into 3 groups according to their teaching programmes: technical schools (Group A), teacher-training colleges (Group B) and junior high schools (Group C). The adopted questionnaire was that developed by the cardiovascular centre of the University of Iowa, slightly modified by the authors, but keeping the "multiple choice" pattern. The questions were focused on the three major areas of anatomy, physiology and pathology. All the students answered the questionnaire although none with 100% accuracy. The highest performance (95% of correct answers) was given in the field of the physiology of the heart of effort, the lowest one concerned the position of the heart in the chest (20%). Fifty-seven per cent of the students refrained from answering the question on myocardial ischaemia. The total score (based on the number of correct answers, incorrect ones and the number of blanks) revealed a significantly different level of cardiovascular health knowledge between the various school groups: group C (64.13 +/- 7.55) performed better than group A (67.15 +/- 9.45, P less than 0.001), which in turn was more successful than group B (71.6 +/- 10.0, P less than 0.001). In comparison to the group of 325 students, the score obtained by a sample group of hospital nursing students, showed a significantly higher level of health knowledge (46.1 +/- 1.56, P less than 0.001).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)