[Cardiovascular assessment of diabetic patients]

Type 2 diabetes is a cardiovascular disease. The morbidity and mortality among these patients are primarily due to cardiovascular diseases. There are many guidelines regarding clinical evaluation of cardiovascular disease in those patients. Implementation of these guidelines has been an argued subject. Our objective in this paper is to describe what basal cardiovascular evaluation has been carried out at a specialized university Diabetes Center.

Data were collected from February to October 2006 of 121 type 2 diabetes individuals who were enrolled at the Diabetes Center of Federal University of São Paulo. We analyzed the type of cardiovascular disease evaluation that they had been submitted in the year that preceded the consultation.

We have observed a high prevalence of several other cardiovascular risk factors in this population. The cardiovascular evaluations during this period has shown 36% of the patients had not been submitted to any cardiovascular test, 17% had been submitted to resting electrocardiogram and 27% of the patients had been submitted to exercise test. Rest echocardiogram, pharmacologic stress echocardiogram, myocardial perfusion scintigraphy, and coronary angiography have been carried out in a much lesser ratio.

Our data has shown the variability and limitations on boarding diagnosing of DAC in university environment patients and point us the necessity of constructing defined and directed directives for the peculiarities of the Brazilian population and health system.