Diabetes mellitus is associated with non-specific electrocardiographic changes such as tachycardia, shortened QRS and QT intervals, and increased QT dispersion, likely due to increased sympathetic tone.
What are the typical electrocardiographic changes in patients with diabetes mellitus?
Electrocardiographic changes in diabetes mellitus, such as tachycardia and altered repolarization, are non-specific and primarily driven by increased sympathetic tone, highlighting the role of autonomic neuropathy.
Diabetes mellitus (DM) has been known for many years to be associated with poor cardiovascular prognosis. Due to the sensitive neuropathy, the coronary artery disease in diabetic patients is frequently asymptomatic. Also twelve leads resting ECG can be within normal limits even in an advanced stage of coronary artery disease. Therefore in addition to the standard ECG other electrocardiographic procedures started to be studied in order to find some typical signs of myocardial damages caused by DM. Repeatedly reported results showed in DM patients without cardiovascular complications the tachycardia, shortening of the QRS and QT intervals, increase of the dispersion of QT interval, decreased amplitudes of depolarization waves, shortened activation time of ventricular myocardium and a flattening of T waves confirmed by the lower value of maximum and minimum in repolarization body surface isopotential maps. Most of these changes are even more pronounced in patients with cardiac autonomic neuropathy. Comparison with similar ECG changes in other diseases suggests that the electrocardiographic changes in DM patients are not specific and that they are particularly caused by an increased tone of the sympathetic nervous system what was indirectly confirmed by the heart rate variability findings in these patients.
Otomar Kittnar (Mon,) conducted a review in Diabetes Mellitus. Diabetes Mellitus vs. Healthy controls was evaluated on Electrocardiographic changes. Diabetes mellitus is associated with non-specific electrocardiographic changes such as tachycardia, shortened QRS and QT intervals, and increased QT dispersion, likely due to increased sympathetic tone.