Vol.:(0123456789) Wireless Personal Communications https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-020-07195-4 1 3 Determining Significant Risk Factors for Preventing Elderly People with Hypertension from Cardiovascular Disease Complication Using Maximum Objective Distance Supansa Chaising 1  · Punnarumol Temdee 1 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract With the increasing aging population worldwide, cardiovascular disease (CVD) has become the leading cause of disability and death. Hypertension is one of the most critical factors causing CVD complication. Determining risk factors of hypertension is extremely important for preventing elderly people with hypertension from CVD complication. Accordingly, this study proposes a new measurement so-called objective distance that is influenced by the significant risk factors of hypertension development. The assumption is made that the maximum objective distance is derived from significant risk factors. This study employs the secondary data of 121 elderly people aged 65 and over, derived from hospitals in Chiang Rai, Thailand. The gathered data contains all potential risk factors of hypertension development, including total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cho- lesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), physical activity, smok- ing, medication adherence, and body mass index. The decision tree is employed in this study for determining the significant risk factors in order to verify the proposed assump- tion. The results show that the obtained significant risk factors are TC, LDL-C, HDL-C, physical activity, and smoking. Importantly, the combination of obtained significant risk factors provides the maximum objective distance regarding the proposed assumption. Keywords Cardiovascular disease (CVD) · Hypertension · Significant risk factors · Elderly people · Objective distance · Decision tree 1 Introduction The global population aged 60 or above, known as elderly people, is increasing rapidly nowadays because people are living longer than those in the past. The number of elderly people was 382 million in 1980. It was an estimated 524 million people, accounted for 8% * Punnarumol Temdee punnarumol@mfu.ac.th Supansa Chaising supansa.cha10@lamduan.mfu.ac.th 1 Computer and Communication Engineering for Capacity Building Research Unit, School of Information Technology, Mae Fah Luang University, Chiang Rai, Thailand