Usefulness of Subclinical Left Ventricular Midwall Dysfunction to Predict Cardiovascular Mortality in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

In this study, we tested the hypothesis that impaired midwall shortening predicts cardiovascular (CV) mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). In patients with DM without overt cardiac disease, systolic left ventricular (LV) function analyzed by midwall shortening may be impaired although LV ejection fraction is preserved. Impaired midwall shortening is an early independent prognosticator of adverse clinical outcome in patients with arterial hypertension. We analyzed the echocardiographic data from 360 outpatients with DM collected during the years 1990 to 2007. Patients had no history or symptoms attributable to cardiac disease. Stress-corrected midwall shortening (sc-MS) was taken as index of systolic LV function and considered impaired if