[Subclinical left ventricular dysfunction in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus]

Recent studies have shown a high prevalence of asymptomatic forms of heart failure in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. The presence of even subclinical forms of heart failure in type 2 DM is associated with a negative prognosis of the disease, leading to a significant increase in the frequency of hospitalizations and mortality.

Identification of left ventricle subclinical dysfunction in terms of its diastolic function, deformation parameters and rotational properties of the myocardium in patients with type 2 diabetes.

A prospective case-control single-center study, performed simultaneously in groups of patients with type 2 diabetes and hypertension. To identify left ventricular dysfunction (LV), an echocardiographic study was performed, including tissue dopplerography and Speckle Tracking Echocardiography in 2D and 3D modes.

We examined four groups of patients comparable in age and sex distribution, with no obvious clinical signs of heart failure. Group I comprised 56 patients with type 2 diabetes and moderate hypertension. Group II included 52 patients with type 2 diabetes without an increase of blood pressure. Group III (54 people) consisted of patients with essential II degree hypertension without diabetes. Group IV (control) — 30 healthy individuals. The use of tissue dopplerography and Speckle Tracking Echocardiography allows more often (p<0.05) to detect signs of LV dysfunction in patients with type 2 diabetes compared with routine echocardiography methods. It was found that in patients with a combination of type 2 diabetes and moderate hypertension, a prognostically unfavorable restrictive variant of diastolic dysfunction is more common (p<0.05) in contrast to patients with diabetes without hypertension or those with hypertension without diabetes. The combination of type 2 diabetes and hypertension to a greater extent leads to an increase in the longitudinal global deformation of the left ventricle compared with patients who had only one of these diseases (p<0.05). A decrease in the global area strain, an early marker of LV systolic dysfunction, was expressed (p<0.05) in patients with type 2 diabetes, regardless of the presence of concomitant hypertension.

This study shows the importance of using tissue dopplerography and Speckle Tracking Echocardiography in the diagnosis of subclinical heart failure. The results indicate a high prevalence of subclinical systolic-diastolic LV dysfunction in type 2 diabetes, which is aggravated in the presence of concomitant hypertension in patients without obvious clinical signs of heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases.