Association of diabetes mellitus and acute myocardial infarction: a study in a semi urban centre

Background: Acute myocardial infarction is one of the very common ailments, that quite often ends in mortality. The risk factors for AMI has been identified as smoking, alcoholism, high cholesterol, obesity, left ventricular hypertrophy, high triglyceride levels and diabetes mellitus. This study was done to evaluate diabetes as a risk factor for the incidence of acute myocardial infarction in our area.Methods: Demographic details such as age, sex, height, weight, BMI, blood pressure, details of alcoholism or smoking were taken. Physical examination was conducted for all the patients. Previous clinical and medical history was taken for all the patients. The predictors for calculation of 10 years risk factor for SCORE were age, sex, smoking, cholesterol and triglyceride levels and blood pressure.Results: The mean age of the males was 66.1±2.7 and women was 68.8±4.9. 27.3% of the males and 29.4% of the females were obese while 34.6% of males and 32.4% of females were overweight. The mean random blood sugar among the diabetic patients was around 143.5 mg/dL, and in the non-diabetics it was 84.4mg/dL. Out of the 48 diabetic patients, 32 of them (66.7%) had a previous history of MI while in non-diabetes, 53.7% had a previous MI attack.Conclusions: It is essential for the early detection of diabetes and control of the sugar levels, so as to reduce the risk of cardiovascular ailments, since diabetes is one of the independent risk factors.