A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ECG FINDINGS OF GUTKHA CHEWERS AND NON-TOBACCO USERS

Abstract

As per the world health report of 2002, tobacco is one of the chief causes of cardiovascular deaths worldwide. The
important cause of coronary artery disease is smoking cigarettes. A very little research development has been done
on smokeless tobacco and the current work is to assess the status of electrocardiograph for non-tobacco users and
those who chew tobacco (gutkha). This is to have a comparative analysis of their respective electrocardiogram
status.
The objective of the study is to study the variations in ECG waveforms among Gutkha Chewers and compare that
with the ECG status of Non-users of tobacco. 120 male respondents have participated in the given research. The age
group of these participants is in between 19-35 years. There are 60 gutkha chewers and 60 non-tobaccousers in the
study. These 60 male gutkha chewers are consuming gutkha for more than 6 months. Further, to present data in a
tabular form, SPSS version 25 software is used. This infers that as the number of gutkha consumption increases,
problems of the ECG parameters will increase significantly. In the finding, no age impact had been observed
regarding the number of years of tobacco or gutkha consumption and the ECG parameters. However, overall,
variations had been observed in the ECG waveforms among gutkha-chewers (case group) vs. non-tobacco chewers
(control group).