Do diabetic patients without previous myocardial infarction have as high a risk of myocardial infarction as nondiabetic patients with previous myocardial infarction?
Type 2 diabetes confers a risk of myocardial infarction equivalent to that of a prior myocardial infarction in nondiabetic patients, providing a rationale for aggressive cardiovascular risk factor management.
Our data suggest that diabetic patients without previous myocardial infarction have as high a risk of myocardial infarction as nondiabetic patients with previous myocardial infarction. These data provide a rationale for treating cardiovascular risk factors in diabetic patients as aggressively as in nondiabetic patients with prior myocardial infarction.
Haffner et al. (Thu,) studied this question.