Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Diabetes and dyslipidemia are two common comorbid conditions encountered in clinical practice. Diabetes is considered as a cardiovascular disease (CVD) equivalent. Most professional organizations suggest statin therapy for diabetic patients, regardless of baseline lipid levels for patients with overt cardiovascular disease or without CVD over 40 years and have one or more other CVD risk factors. For lower risk patients;the LDL goal is 100 mg/dl and for patients with overt CVD the LDL goal is 70 mg/dl.

Materials and methods: In this retrospective review, we aimed to evaluate the statin use of our diabetic patients in a tertiary care endocrinology outpatient clinic.

Results: Total of 136 diabetic patients were evaluated. In the overall group the ratio of statin users was 39.7% (n=54), and non-users was 60.3% (n=82).

From the total of 136 diabetic patients only 36.8% (n=50) patients had an LDL level <100 mg/dl, the remaining 63.2% (n=86) patients had an LDL level >100 mg/dl. When cardiovascular disease has been taken into consideration; in the overall group 18.4% (n=25) patients had overt cardiovascular disease. Of these 25 patients 68% (n=17) was on statin treatment and 32% (n=8) was not. Only one (4%) of overt CVD patients reached the LDL goal of <70 mg/dl, and the remaining 24 (96%) had LDL level of >70 mg/dl.

Conclusions: Diabetes is a cardiovascular disease equivalent and statin treatment is required for most diabetic patients for primary or secondary prevention. Our results show that even most overt CVD patients are not on statin treatment and statin treated patients are not on goal. For lower risk patients the number of statin non-users and LDL levels above target is even higher. The reasons for this situation must be carefully addressed and treated accordingly. Further studies are needed to clarify this issue.