An abnormal ankle-brachial index (ABI) is associated with higher risk for future cardio-vascular (CV) events; however, it is unknown whether this association is true in patients with associated diabetes mellitus (DM).
The objective of this study was to determine frequency of coronary artery disease in terms of number of vessels involved using angiography in diabetic patients with abnormal ankle brachial index.
This Cross Sectional Study was done at Department of Adult Cardiology, CPE institute of Cardiology Multan. ABI was measured using the standard method. After measuring the ABI, angiography was done on patients with abnormal ABI and pattern of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) was recoded noting the number of vessels involved.
A total of 115 patients were included in the study. The mean age of patients was 62.40 years with standard deviation of 2.78 years. Majority of the patients in the study were male (68.7%). Mean ABI was of study participants was 1.2 with standard deviation of 0.58 while mean duration of disease was 3.2 years with standard deviation of 0.7 years. 97 of the study participants were hypertensive and 18 were smokers. A total of 28 patients (24.3%) did not have CAD as per angiography while the rest had 1 vessel disease (33.4%), 2 vessel disease (29.5%), and 3 vessel disease (20.9%). Stratification of patients by age, gender, duration of disease, hypertension and low/high ABI showed p value > 0.05 in all cases showing statistically insignificant difference between various subgroups.
It is concluded that there is high frequency of CAD in diabetic patients with abnormal ABI.