Research Article Physician Awareness of Knee and Hip Pain in the Context of Coronary Heart Disease Treatment Mathias Glehr, 1 Anna Kaltenbach, 1 Reinhold Glehr, 2 Patrick Sadoghi, 1 Andreas Leithner, 1 Gerald Gruber, 1 Joanna Szkandera, 3 Sabine Ludt, 4 Ines Vielgut, 1 Reingard Glehr, 5 and Michel Wensing 6 1 Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Medical University of Graz, Auenbruggerplatz 5, 8036 Graz, Austria 2 Medical University of Graz, Auenbruggerplatz 5, 8036 Graz, Austria 3 Division of Clinical Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, Medical University of Graz, Auenbruggerplatz 5, 8036 Graz, Austria 4 Department of General Practice and Health Services Research, Voßstraße 2, Geb. 37, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany 5 Department of General Practice and Family Medicine, Medical University of Vienna, Kinderspitalgasse 15/1, 1090 Vienna, Austria 6 Scientiic Institute for Quality of Healthcare, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, P.O. Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen, he Netherlands Correspondence should be addressed to Gerald Gruber; gerald.gruber@klinikum-graz.at Received 31 August 2013; Accepted 30 October 2013; Published 3 February 2014 Academic Editors: C. L. Athanasuleas, C. Carbucicchio, and F. Giallauria Copyright © 2014 Mathias Glehr et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. he beneit of physical activity for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been well documented. he aim of the present study was to determine the level of awareness among general practitioners (GPs) of knee and hip problems in patients with CVD or CVD risk. Design. Cross-sectional questionnaire survey. Setting and Subjects. hirty-ive Austrian GPs and 1,118 patients were included. he GPs completed an extraction form about the presence or absence of documented evidence of problems related to the knee and/or hip joint within the patient medical data. Patients, in turn, were asked to complete a questionnaire that included the Oxford Knee/Hip Score and the cardiovascular risk-chart established by the European Society of Cardiology. Results. In 748 patients’ data from medical records and questionnaires were available. 40.9% of these patients sufered from serious knee pain and 32.1% from hip pain. However, in the medical records, in only 51.3% (knee) and 48.1% (hip) of these pain-patients the problems were documented. Conclusion. Joint disorders of the knee and hip problems are considerable barriers to efective physical activity and can therefore contribute to the development of CVD. Our data showed that GP awareness of such knee/hip disorders should be improved. 1. Background and Objective he risk charts from the European Guidelines on Cardio- vascular Disease Prevention focus on blood pressure, lipid proile, and smoking [1]. Regular physical activity and aerobic exercise training are recommended as a very important nonpharmacological treatment for primary and secondary CVD prevention [2–6]. However, to date, these guidelines have made no mention of the fact that osteoarthrotic pain in the knee and hip joint is a barrier to physical activity and should therefore be addressed during clinical consultation of CVD patients [1]. his is particularly problematic when one considers that patients with osteoarthritis seem to have higher CVD risk factors than the general population in all observed categories (hypertension, diabetes, high total cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, and renal impairment or failure) [7]. Physical activity (PA) has been shown to inhibit the emergence and progression of CVD. It has beneicial efects on the development of atherosclerosis and results in a signiicant reduction in all-cause mortality [5]. Even in the more disabled patients, small amounts of properly supervised physical activity help improve cardiovascular status, main- tain an independent lifestyle, and counteract disease-related Hindawi Publishing Corporation e Scientific World Journal Volume 2014, Article ID 494801, 5 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/494801