The investigation included a total of 3,153 patients, whose median age was 81 years.
The clinical profile of patients with advanced heart failure and type 2 diabetes is characterized by two new demonstrations: nausea and erratic pains. This is detailed in a new study carried out by Spanish researchers who ensure that “these clinical complications are different from those of patients without type 2 diabetes.”
The article, published in European Journal of Internal Medicine of Elsevier and called ‘Epicter’, shows how “the outcomes of patients with advanced heart failure were poor and those who also presented type 2 diabetes had a worse prognosis,” says Jose Carlos Arevalo Loridomain author of the study and specialist of the Internal Medicine Service of the University Hospital of Badajoz.
The research included a total of 3,153 patients, whose median age was 81 years. In addition, the percentage of women present in the sample was slightly higher than that of men, being 50.6 percent. Of the total number of patients, 739 of these, that is, 23.4 percent met the advanced heart failure criteria.
Likewise, a total of 1,434 patients (45.5 percent) had a previous diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. Of these, 344 patients (24 percent) met criteria for heart failure versus 23 percent of those without type 2 diabetes.
What do the research results reveal?
The work, which has participation of 12 specialists in Internal Medicine from all over Spainrevealed that “the prevalence of advanced heart failure was very similar between patients with and without type 2 diabetes. However, the differences in characteristics make these patients have different profiles, which is in line with our hypothesis,” the researchers detail.
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“Advanced heart failure patients without type 2 diabetes had a higher rate of valvular heart disease” |
In addition, the results showed that “patients with advanced heart failure and type 2 diabetes had more comorbidity and a higher rate of prior heart failure and atrial fibrillation/flutter.”
The researchers also stress that, on the other hand, “patients with advanced heart failure without type 2 diabetes had a higher rate of heart valve disease“.
Objectives of the Epicter study
The Epicter study is a “transversal and multicenter project in Spain whose objective was to calculate the prevalence of advanced heart failure in hospitalized patients”. To do this, “new clinical variables beyond cardiac parameters were incorporated: a combination of cardiac criteria (criterios de la National Hospice Organization) and general to define this cardiac pathology”, emphasize the researchers.
For all these reasons, “the objective of this study is analyze the characteristics of advanced heart failure in patients with and without type 2 diabetes and determine the relevance of cardiac and general criteria to better define advanced disease, as measured by 6-month mortality.” Finally, the internists “hypothesized that patients with type 2 diabetes have a heart failure profile different from that of patients without type 2 diabetes and that the variables to be taken into account when defining cardiac pathology differ according to the presence or absence of this type of diabetes“.
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