SINGAPORE – People with high blood pressure stand a greater chance of suffering further complications like coronary heart disease and chronic kidney disease than people with other types of chronic diseases, new statistics from the National Healthcare Group (NHG) show.

Being overweight and obese were also the most significant predictors for developing diabetes, followed by ethnicity and gender, the NHG revealed on Monday (May 13).

The NHG is one of three healthcare clusters here – the others being the Singapore Health Services and National University Health System – and counts hospitals, polyclinics and other medical institutes under its portfolio.

Patients with high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol have a 6.3 per cent annual progression rate to complications like cerebrovascular disease, while those with high blood pressure and diabetes have a 4.6 per cent rate.

For patients with only high blood pressure, the rate of 2.2 per cent is more than twice that for those with only diabetes or high cholesterol (1 per cent), according to statistics from NHG’s book on population health, which was launched on Monday (May 13).

The findings were based on more than 252,000 NHG patients who sought treatment for these conditions between 2010 and 2017.

In addition, Malay and Indian women had a higher progression rate to chronic kidney disease and coronary heart disease than men, while Chinese women had a higher progression rate to chronic kidney disease.

Men from the three ethnic groups had a higher progression rate to stroke than women.

Meanwhile, obese people were three times as likely to get diabetes in a six-year period, compared to the overweight group, who were nearly twice (1.8 times) as likely to get it than people in the normal weight range.

In terms of ethnicity, Indians were one and a half times more likely to develop diabetes than Malays who were 1.3 times more likely to develop it than Chinese people.

This was based on analysis of about 22,000 patients who were followed over six years.

The book – River of Life: NHG’s Perspectives on Population Health -also uncovered some other unpleasant truths about chronic disease and frailty.

From 2008 to 2017, the yearly number of chronic disease patients seen at the NHG’s polyclinics grew by more than half (56 per cent) to about 220,000, while the number of frail patients across its institutions increased by a third (35.5 per cent) from 36,208 patients in 2010 to 49,092 in 2017.

Frailty, chronic disease and poor lifestyle habits were identified by the organisation as the main drivers of healthcare use and costs, said Professor Pang Weng Sun, NHG’s deputy group chief executive officer (Population Health). He added: “If we don’t do anything about it now, we are going to be slapped like a tsunami in the near future.”

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