Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Association between ankle-brachial index (ABI) and coronary, cerebral, and peripheral vessels involvement has been shown in different studies. The normal range of ABI is between 0.9 and 1.4. Values below 0.9 show peripheral vessel disease. An ABI more than 1.4 is characteristic for vascular rigidity. We aimed to investigate the ABI value in our type 2 diabetic patients and association of ABI with glycemic control.

Materials and methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 136 type 2 diabetic patients. Ankle systolic blood pressure was measured on posterior tibialis arteries by using IABP- hand Doppler. ABI was calculated as as the highest ankle systolic pressure divided by highest brachial systolic pressure in each patient.

Results: 95 females and 41 males were examined, mean age 54.4±4 years. The mean duration of diabetes was 118.6±89.2 months. The mean A1c level was 8.03±1.7%. According to ABI values, there was only one patient whose ABI below 0.9. Peripheral arterial pulses was intact for this patient. 65.6% of our patients were within normal ABI value (0.9–1.4). 33.5% of our diabetic patients had ABI value of >1.4. When diabetic patients were categorized into three different groups based on A1c, <7, 7–9 and >7; ABI value did not show any significant difference between groups (P=0.472). When analysis was performed based on vascular complication status, ABI value was not statistically different between two groups which were group with and without vascular complications (P=0.901). There was no correlation of ABI value with A1c, duration of diabetes.

Conclusion: Approximately 34% of our patients had high ABI. In our study, ABI was not found as correlated to the current degree of glycemic control which is indicated by A1c. There is a need for further investigation of potential relationships between abnormal ABI and prevalence of coronary heart disease among type 2 diabetics.