[Predictive value of differential pulse pressure in the diagnosis of silent myocardial ischemia in patients with type-2 diabetes]. / Valor predictivo de la presión diferencial del pulso en el diagnóstico de isquemia miocárdica silente en pacientes con diabetes tipo 2.

ABSTRACT

Silent myocardial ischemia occurs more frequently in diabetics. Differential arterial pulse pressure is a valuable predictor of cardiovascular disease. We studied 48 consecutive male patients with type-2 diabetes and no known history of ischemic heart disease. Ambulatory monitoring of arterial pressure was carried out and the presence of silent myocardial ischemia was studied using a protocol that involved resting ECG, echocardiography, 24-hour Holter ECG, conventional exercise stress testing, and exercise testing with nuclear scanning. Nine patients (19%) had silent myocardial ischemia. Differential pulse pressure had good discriminative ability in identifying the presence of silent ischemia the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was 0.83 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.71-0.96; P=.002). This predictive ability was also observed on adjusted logistic regression modeling (odds ratio [OR], 1.24, 95% CI = 1.02-1.49). We found that the OR for the risk of silent ischemia for every 10-mmHg increase in differential pulse pressure was 8.5 (95% CI 1.7-31.2). Age and differential pulse pressure were the only independent predictors of silent myocardial ischemia found in this study.