Risk of Ischemic Heart Disease in Patients With Postpancreatectomy Diabetes and Pancreatic Cancer: A Population‐Based Study

Abstract

Background Postpancreatectomy diabetes can be caused by resection of functioning pancreatic tissue and is associated with postoperative pancreatic islet cell mass loss and subsequent endocrine dysfunction. Diabetes is a well‐known risk factor for ischemic heart disease. However, no previous studies have investigated ischemic heart disease in patients with postpancreatectomy diabetes and pancreatic cancer. Methods and Results Rates of patients with diabetes diagnosed with pancreatic cancer who underwent pancreatectomy between 2002 and 2019 in South Korea were obtained from the Korean National Health Insurance Service database. Patient‐level propensity score matching was conducted to reduce the possibility of selection bias, and multivariate Cox proportional hazards models were used to determine the association between postpancreatectomy diabetes and ischemic heart disease. In total, 30 242 patients were initially enrolled in the study. After applying exclusion criteria and propensity score matching, 2952 patients were included in the comparative analysis between the postpancreatectomy group with diabetes and the group without diabetes. Patients in the postpancreatectomy group with diabetes had significantly higher rates of ischemic heart disease than those in the group without diabetes. In total, 3432 patients were included in the comparison between the postpancreatectomy and prepancreatectomy groups with diabetes. There was no significant difference in the risk of ischemic heart disease between the postpancreatectomy and prepancreatectomy groups with diabetes. Conclusions Patients who developed diabetes after pancreatectomy had a higher risk of ischemic heart disease than patients who did not develop diabetes after pancreatectomy, and the rate of ischemic heart disease in these patients was similar to that in patients preoperatively diagnosed with diabetes.