Left ventricular systolic and diastolic functions in diabetic patients without clinical evidence of cardiovascular diseases

ABSTRACT

Diabetic microangiopathy and myocardial cellular alterations occur commonly in diabetics and present themselves in variety of symptoms which may be involved in the entity of diabetic cardiomyopathy. Left ventricular function was studied using M-mode and Doppler echocardiography in 40 adult onset diabetic patients without clinical evidence of cardiac diseases and 15 normal controls, all of them have normal resting ECG and stress test. The data obtained from this study have shown impaired left ventricular diastolic function as evidence by the reversed E/A ratio [E, early rapid diastolic inflow, A = late diastolic inflow due to atrial contraction] in diabetics compared to controls although the end diastolic dimension was not significantly different in both groups and this may indicate that the presence of diabetic cardiomyopathy may be reflected early by impaired left ventricular diastolic function which may later on, present clinically with the overt left ventricular failure