Endocrine Abstracts

Aim: We aimed to evaluate wrist and ankle measurements in patients with and without diabetes-related macrovascular disease.

Material and method: 151 consecutive patients with type 2 diabetes who came to our diabetic outpatient clinic were included. We have divided the patients into two groups. Group 1 (patients with diabetes related macrovascular complications) and group 2 (patients without diabetes related macrovascular complications). Group 1 (n:45) includes diabetic patients with complete occlusion of one of the lower extremity arteries (right and left leg, dorsal and tibial arteries), cerebrovascular disease, coronary stenting, history of myocardial infarction (MI), coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) and diabetic foot. Group 2 (n:106) includes diabetic patients without macrovascular complications.

Results: In Group 1 there were 14 patients with complete occlusion of one of the lower extremity arteries, 10 patients with cerebrovascular disease, 20 patients with coronary stenting, 13 patients with history of myocardial infarction (MI), nine patients with coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) and one patient with right leg amputation due to diabetic foot disease. Wrist circumference was found to be statistically significantly thicker in group 1 (18.17±1.46) than group 2 (17.53±1.73) (P=0.042). Statistical analyzes with chi-square test revealed a significant relationship between the presence of macrovascular complications and sex (P=0.003) (odds ratio(OR) 2.891, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.405–5.952), antihypertensive drug use (P=0.0001) (OR 12.553, 95% CI 4.191–37.596), statin use (P=0.018) (OR 2.426, 95% CI 1.156–5.093), metformin use (P=0.008) (OR 0.379, 95% CI 0.184–0.781), presence of diabetic foot (OR 7.714% 95% CI 0.780–76.259), presence of neuropathy (P=0.035) (OR 2.246, 95% CI 1.049–4.806). In the analysis of correlation, positive correlations were found between wrist circumference and age (r=0.192, P=0.018), height (r=0.273, P=0.001), weight (r=0.388, P=0.0001), body mass index (BMI) (r=0.187, P=0.021), waist circumference (r=0.382, P=0.0001), ankle circumference (r=0.362, P=0.0001. Positive correlations were found between ankle circumference and BMI (R=0.331; P=0.0001), waist circumference (r=0.365; P=0.0001), wirst circumference (r=0.241; P=0.003).

Conclusion: In diabetic patients, the relation between waist/hip ratio and macrovascular complications has been shown in many studies. In this sudy, we have demonstrated that the wrist is thicker in patients with diabetic-related macrovascular complications. This study shows that wrist circumference measurement in diabetic patients may be an important predictive anthropometric measurement for macrovasular complications as waist/hip ratio.