Cardiac function and its relation to microalbuminuria in type 11 diabetes mellitus: an echocardiographic study

ABSTRACT

To study the possible changes in cardiac function associating type II diabetes mellitus, echocardiography was performed for 30 non-insulin dependent diabetic patients and 10 normal healthy subjects as control group. The selected diabetic patients were free from risk factors that may affect cardiac function and were further subdivided according to duration of diabetes and presence or absence of microalbuminuria. The results of this study showed a high incidence of impaired left ventricular function [systolic and diastolic] of variable degrees [18/30, 60%]. The mean values of duration of diabetes, fasting and 2 hours post prandial blood glucose for patients with left ventriculardysfurction 9.5 +/- 3.97, 225.11 +/- 66.68 mg/dl and 305.72 +/- 78.85 mg/dl respectively were singnificantly higher [P<0.01, P<0.05 and P<0.01 respectively] than those for diabetics with normal left ventricular function [6.0 +/- 2.45 years, 182.41 +/- 37.01 mg/dl and 239.5 +/- 41.27 mg/dl respectively. Also we found that the degree of cardiac dysfunction was higher in patients with microalbumimuria than that in diabetics without microalbuminuria. We concluded that type II diabetes mellitus may be associated with cardiac dysfunction which may positively correlate with duration of diabetes and degree of hyperglycemia. Also a higher degree of cardiac dysfunction might be expected in the presence of microalbuminura which could be considered as an indicator not only of early diabetic nephropathy but also of early other diabetic microvascular complications including myocardial dysfunction