A STUDY ON THE PREVALENCE OF CARDIAC AUTONOMIC NEUROPATHY IN DIABETIC PATIENTS – A HOSPITAL BASED STUDY.

Abstract

Background: Diabetic Autonomic Neuropathy (DAN) is a serious and common complication of diabetes. Despite its relationship to an increased risk of cardiovascular mortality and its association with the multiple symptoms and impairments, the signicance of diabetic autonomic neuropathy has not been fully appreciated. DAN can manifests in a spectrum of things, ranging from resting tachycardia and xed heart rate (HR) to development of “silent” myocardial infarction.The prevalence of CAN is variable based on published studies and ranges from 2% to 91% in type I diabetes mellitus (T1DM) and 25% to 75% in type 2 diabetes (T2DM). This signicant variability can likely be attributed to the lack of a uniform 2 diagnostic criteria as well as underdiagnosis in the typical hospital setting. Aim And Objectives :To study the prevalence of cardiac autonomic neuropathy in hospital admitted diabetic patients. Materials And Methods : 60 diabetic patients were taken for the study of which 48 were males and 12 were females.The study was carried out in tertiary care teaching hospital in North east India after clearance from institutional ethics committee. Subjects were divided according to duration of diabetes as Group I : 0 – 5 years(24 patients), Group II : 6 – 9 years(24patients), Group II I: 10 years or more(12 patients). Then special interest was taken to nd out cardiac autonomic neuropathy and all the 5 tests were carried out in each of the patients to detect cardiac autonomic neuropathy and were divided into 3 groups. Group I ( normal autonomic function test), group II ( early DAN), group III ( denitive DAN ). Results : In the present study it has been observed that out of 24 (40%) cases of diabetes mellitus in the 0 – 5 year duration group, 4 cases (16.7%) are having autonomic neuropathy, out of 24 cases in the duration group 6 – 9 years, 10 cases (41.7%) are having autonomic neuropathy and in the duration group ≥ 10 years, 8 cases out of 12 (66.7%) showing neuropathy. In the present study prevalence of diabetic autonomic neuropathy out of 60 number of patients taken it was seen as: 38 cases (63.3%) with normal autonomic function tests placed in group I, 12 cases (20%) with only cardiac parasympathetic damage or early DAN were placed in group II and 10 cases (16.7%) with both cardiac parasympathetic and sympathetic damage or denitive DAN were placed in group III. So out of 60 diabetic patients, 22 patients (36.7%) showed abnormal cardiovascular reex in the present study. Conclusion: It has been observed from the present study that duration of diabetes mellitus is directly proportional to development of cardiac autonomic neuropathy.