Left ventricular function in patients with uncomplicated well-controlled diabetes mellitus

Recent findings indicate that symptomatic heart disease in patients with diabetes mellitus predicts poor prognosis, but cardiac involvement may occur before clinical manifestation. Diastolic dysfunction may be the first stage of diabetic cardiomyopathy.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the cardiovascular function in patients with DM in early stages.

we studied a group of 62 patients, males and females, aged between 51 and 65 years old, with well-controlled DM; they were investigated using transthoracic echocardiography (TTE). Two dimensional, pulsed Doppler techniques were used to asses the systolic and diastolic function for left ventricle (LV).

none of the patients had any clinical signs of cardiac involvement, nor ECG or TTE systolic function impairment. There are significant differences between DM patients and control group for peak A velocity (0.72 +/- 0.19 vs 0.56 +/- 0.29, P=0.05) and E/A ratio (1.03 +/- 0.29 vs 1.51 +/- 0.26, P = 0.01) which account for filling impairment of LV.

the analysis of DM heart disease, mainly at a preclinical level, is important in all the cases as an asymptomatic patient may have diastolic dysfunction which can be treated and should be closer observed.