Hyperglycemia after myocardial infarction as an indicator of undiagnosed diabetes mellitus

Objective: to determine the incidence of undiagnosed diabetes mellitus in patients of acute myocardial infarction who have elevated serum glucose levels at the time of presentation. study design: observational study place and duration of study: department of cardiology,bahawal victoria hospital bahawalpur from 1st may 2012 to 31st october 2012. methodology: initially 531 patients presenting with acute myocardial infarction with an elevated serum glucose level at the time of admission were included in the study. out of these,493 patients were subjected to oral glucose tolerance test (ogtt) one month after the acute event. the patients were divided into three groups depending upon the results of ogtt; normal,impaired glucose tolerance or diabetes mellitus. the data was analyzaed using spss version 10. results: in our study,62 % of the subjects with elevated serum glucose level at the time of admission had deranged glucose metabolism as diagnosed by subsequent ogtt. the criteria to be diagnosed as having diabetes mellitus were fulfilled by 137 patients. age of the patients,bmi,and the prevalence of hypertension and family history of diabetes mellitus were higher in the study group having deranged glucose metabolism,as well as the patients falling in this category were mostly males. conclusion: all the patients presenting with acute myocardial infarction with previously undiagnosed diabetes mellitus need to be screened for underlying diabetes mellitus.