[Ventricular late potentials in patients with diabetes mellitus]

Ventricular late potentials (VLP) was measured in 31 normal subjects, 31 coronary heart disease (CHD) patients and 31 diabetic patients whose ECG and UCG were normal. Matched control study was used. The result revealed that the positive rates of VLP of CHD group (45.16%) was significantly higher than that of diabetic group without clinical cardiomyopathy (19.35%, P < 0.05), and diabetic group was significantly higher than that of normal subjects (0%, P < 0.05). Although electrocardiogram and echocardiography were normal in all the diabetic patients, the VLP positive rate was 19.35%. Experimental and clinical studies had shown a positive correlation between the duration of late potentials, malignent ventricular arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death so that measurement of VLP might be a new and valuable technique to detect subclinical diabetic cardiomyopathy, and to predict ventricular arrhythmia attack and sudden cardiac death in diabetic patients.