Prevalence of Cardiac Autonomic Neuropathy among Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in a Tertiary Care Centre

Background: Cardiac Autonomic Neuropathy (CAN) is one of the chronic complications of diabetes mellitus, with potentially dangerous outcomes. Though very frequent, it is one of the most under diagnosed and often overlooked entity. Aim: To study the prevalence of cardiac autonomic neuropathy (CAN) among type 2 diabetes patients using non invasive bedside tests. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among 100 type 2 diabetes patients at our institute, over a period of 6 months. Apart from relevant blood investigations, a detailed history including duration of diabetes, symptoms pertaining to autonomic neuropathy etc. were collected from all patients. A battery of five autonomic function tests using sphygmomanometer, ECG tracings and pulse oxymeter as described by Ewing et al were done in all cases and cardiac autonomic dysfunction score was calculated. IBM.SPSS statistics software was used for statistical analysis. Prevalence of CAN was calculated. Chisquare test was used for categorical variables and p value 0f 0.05 was considered significant. Results: Among 100 patients in study group 25 had an abnormal CAN score and 43 had borderline values. Prevalence of CAN was 58% in our study group. Chi square tests showed significant relation between duration of diabetes and CAN scores with a p value of 0.000.