Table 2.

Baseline characteristics of two cohorts of patients diagnosed with acute myocardial infarction or heart failure, respectively, enrolled in the EFFECT study, and lived in an urban area across Ontario, Canada (percent or $\text{mean}\pm \text{standard deviation}$).

Baseline characteristics	AMI cohort	HF cohort
	($n=\mathrm{10,790}$)	($n=\mathrm{10,676}$)
Demographic characteristics
Age at entry [y ($\text{mean}\pm \text{SD}$)]	$67.3\pm 13.3$	$75.9\pm 11.2$
Male	65	50
Marital status
Married	63	46
Single, separated, divorced, or widowed	33	49
Unknown	4	5
Employment status
Employed	27	6
Not employed	66	90
Unknown	7	4
Clinical severity
Acute pulmonary edema	5	20
Patients with acute myocardial infarction
GRACE risk score	$142\pm 36$	—a
ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI)	43	—
Patients with heart failure
EFFECT-heart failure mortality risk score	—	$87\pm 25$
Ischemic etiology	—	60
In-hospital care
Length of stay (d)	$7.6\pm 6.9$	$8.1\pm 7.9$
Specialty of attending physician
Cardiology	49	27
Internal medicine	28	32
General practice	23	41
Characteristics of hospitals
Teaching	23	24
Community	76	75
Small	1	1
Cardiovascular medication at dischargeb
Statins	54	16
Aspirin	86	40
ACE inhibitor	62	64
Beta-blockers	74	28
Cardiac risk factors and history
Current smoker	32	12
Family history of coronary artery disease	33	—b
Preexisting comorbiditiesc
Diabetes	25	36
Hypertension	52	59
Hyperlipidemia	39	30
Atrial fibrillation	—	33
Acute myocardial infarction	23	38
Stroke	8	17
Previous percutaneous coronary intervention	4	5
Asthma	4	7
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease	23	42
Dementia	4	8
Cancer	12	18
Area-level risk factorsd
Income quintile
Lowest	20	24
Lower middle	22	22
Middle	21	20
Middle upper	19	17
Highest	18	16
% of recent immigrants	4	4
% population age $>15$ y with less than high school education	32	29
% population age $>15$ y without employment	8	7

Note: EFFECT cohorts comprised all patients who were discharged alive with AMI or HF from one of 86 hospitals across Ontario in two periods, 1999–2000 and 2004–2005, respectively. In the present study, we restricted EFFECT cohorts to urban residents ages 35–100 y. AMI, acute myocardial infarction; EFFECT, Enhanced Feedback For Effective Cardiac Treatment study; GRACE, Global Registry of Acute Coronary Syndromes; HF, heart failure; SD, standard deviation.

^aNot applicable unless specified otherwise. For HF cohort, information for the family history of coronary artery disease was unavailable.

^bFor HF cohort, only data from the first phase of EFFECT study (1999–2000) were collected.

^cDuring the past 10 y before cohort inception.

^dFrom the 2001 Canadian Census, at the census dissemination area level.