Effect of diabetes on scintigraphic infarct size in STEMI patients undergoing primary angioplasty

AbstractBackgroundIt has been shown that among patients with ST‐segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), diabetes is associated with a significantly higher mortality, mainly because of impaired reperfusion. However, few data have been reported so far on infarct size as evaluated by well‐refined techniques, such as nuclear imaging techniques. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of diabetes in infarct size as evaluated by myocardial scintigraphy in a large cohort of STEMI patients undergoing primary PCI.MethodsWe included 830 STEMI patients undergoing primary PCI. Infarct size was evaluated at 30 days by technetium‐99 m‐sestamibi. A logistic regression analysis was performed to determine the relation between diabetes and infarct size (as above the median) after correction for baseline confounding factors.ResultsA total of 115 (13.8%) out of 830 patients suffered from diabetes. Diabetic patients were older (p < 0.001), with larger prevalence of female gender (p = 0.006) and hypertension (p = 0.001) but were less often smokers (p = 0.003). Diabetic patients had more often preprocedural thrombolysis in myocardial infarction grade 3 flow (p = 0.034) and less complete ST‐segment resolution (p = 0.009). No difference was observed in scintigraphic infarct size between diabetes and control patients (p = 0.6)), which was confirmed at multivariate analysis after correction for baseline confounding factors (Adjusted OR [95% CI] = 0.87 [0.57–1.31, p = 0.51).ConclusionOur study showed that among STEMI patients undergoing primary angioplasty, diabetes did not affect infarct size as compared with non‐diabetic patients. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.