Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Diabetes is an important risk factor for major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE). Although the increased risk for MACE is well known, the impact on the in-hospital outcomes remains incompletely understood. Our aim was to evaluate the interrelation between diabetes and MACE in a central hospital in the North of Portugal between 2009 and 2015.

Methods: We evaluated retrospectively the hospitalizations due to MACE including stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA), acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and heart failure from the Hospital Coding Centre. We have studied the distribution by age, sex, causes and duration of admissions. Statistical analysis was performed with Student’s t-test and chi-squared test. A two-tailed P value <0.05 was considered significant.

Results: A total of 124150 hospitalizations were registered during the studied period, with a total of 13425 MACE. The proportion of MACE admissions among all admissions was significantly higher in patients with diabetes (13.4% vs 9.7%, P<0.001). Patients with diabetes presented a higher proportion of stroke or TIA (3.9% vs 3.5%, P<0.001), acute coronary syndrome (5.3% vs 3.8%, P<0.001) and heart failure (4.2% vs 2.4%, P<0.001) compared with patients without diabetes. Among individuals with MACE, the group with diabetes was older (71.6±10.8 vs 69.4±15.3 years, P<0.001) and presented a higher proportion of women (46.0% vs 41.6%, P<0.001). There were no significant differences regarding in-hospital mortality among patients with diabetes compared with patients without diabetes (5.4% vs 5.3%, P=0.737). On the other hand, patients with diabetes presented a longer duration of MACE hospitalization (9.9±9.6 vs 8.8±8.5 days, P<0.001).

Conclusions: We observed a higher proportion of admissions for MACE among patients with diabetes. Furthermore, a longer duration of MACE hospitalization was observed among patients with diabetes. The higher incidence of MACE in patients with diabetes highlight the importance of improving the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular complications in this population.