The Immediate Prognosis of Cardiac Infarction in Diabetics

MOST textbooks do not comment upon the mor- tality rate of cardiac infarction in diabetics, although ischaimic heart disease is said to be common amongst them. Paul Wood ( This statement is presumably based upon the findings of Mintz and Katz (1947), who reviewed a series of cases seen between I940 and I945. Of their 572 cases, 85 were diabetic. These authors corre- lated mortality rate and sex, and found it to be i8.6% of non-diabetic males against 27.8% of diabetic and 28.9% of non-diabetic females against 36.7% of diabetic. Later, Katz, Mills and Cisneros (1949), following up the same series, stated that the long-term survival of a diabetic, if alive after two months, is the same as that of a non-diabetic. However, Cole, Singian and Katz (1954) found that diabetes did not affect the immediate outcome, but did shorten long-term survival. Similarly, Doscher and Poindexter (1950), in their own series, found the overall acute mortality was 15.5% among all types of patient and i5.6% among the diabetics. They also re-