Echocardiography Findings in a Cohort of Older Diabetic Patients with Diastolic Dysfunction: Do They Fall Under the Diabetic Cardiomyopathy Diagnosis?

Abstract

ObjectivesOur main goal is to describe the echocardiography findings in older type 2 diabetic patients with diastolic dysfunction (DD) and contrast them with the diabetic cardiomyopathy criteria (1). MethodsWe assessed 201 echocardiography results in a private cardiology center in Guayaquil, Ecuador. We describe the mean±SD of continuous variables, and frequencies of categorical variables with cut-off points taken from the Spanish Society of Cardiac Imaging guidelines. We conducted Chi-square and linear regression analysis for further associations. ResultsThe mean age was 68.07±12.08, 75.6% were females, 92.5% had hypertension (HTN) and 79.1% had DD with a mean ejection fraction of 64.51±9.44. The mean interventricular septum width (IVSW) was 11.05±2.66mm. HTN showed no association with DD (p=0.929), however, an increased IVSW (p=0.47) and age >65yo (p<0.001) did. IVSW also showed a strong positive correlation with posterior wall width (PWW) (B=0.872, p<0.001), although PWW mean was normal (10.48±2.22mm). ConclusionThese diabetic patients had DD which was not related with HTN, but associated with age and increased IVSW. Diabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM) is defined as diastolic or systolic dysfunction in the absence of cardiovascular disease (CVD), therefore we couldn't classify them into this category because the majority had HTN. However, we found no association between DD and HTN, which raises the doubt for future research about whether CVD (eg, HTN) needs to be excluded or not for the diagnosis of DCM.